A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

374 HELIODOR;US. HIELIODORUS.
end of his romance:-ToLtv4e 7rrpa$s 4oXFe rJ with the best of. later Greek romances, that of
orv'Taryca'riwv epl 0yeae's'sgv Kal XapiKAetav Achilles Tatius for example, has the superiority of
Ai'OLomKOr' OJ avveTalep a&vsp 4Ioil't'EIeaeovs, greater nature, less artificial and rhetorical elaboraTcv dcp''HALov yevos, Oeosoalov wrats'HALotwpov. tion, with more real eloquence, less improbability in
The words rCOv dc''HAlov 7yos no doubt mean its incidents, and greater skill in the management
that he was of the family of priests of the Syrian of the episodes, and, in short, the superiority of a
god of the Sun (Elagabalus). He lived about work of original talent over an imitation. It
the end of the fourth century of our era, under formed the model for subsequent Greek romance
Theodosius and his sons. He wrote his romance writers. It is often quoted by the title of Xapiin early life. He afterwards became bishop of KAheLa, just as the work of Achilles is quoted by
Tricca in Thessaly, where he introduced the regu- that of AevKim7rrl, from the names of the respective
lation, that every priest who did not, upon his heroines.
ordination, separate himself from his wife, should In modern times the Aethiopica was scarcely
be deposed. (Socrat. H. E. v. 22.) Nicephorus known till, at the sacking of Ofen in 1526, a MS.
(E. E. xii. 34) adds that, on the ground of the of the work in the library of Matthias Corvinus,
alleged injury which had been done to the morals king of Hungary, attracted, by its rich binding, the
of young persons by the reading of the Aethiopica, attention of a soldier, who brought it into Germany,
a provincial synod decreed that Heliodorus must and at last it came into the hands of Vincentius
either suffer his book to be burnt, or lay down his Opsopoeus, who printed it at Basel, 1534, 4to.
bishopric, and that Heliodorus chose the latter Several better MSS. were afterwards discovered,
alternative. The story has been wisely rejected and in 1596 a new edition was brought out in
by Valesius, Petavius, Huet, and other scholars; folio, at Heidelberg, by Commelinus, with the
and it is the more improbable from the fact that Latin version of Stanislaus Warsichewiczki, which
there is nothing of a corrupting tendency in the had been printed in 1552 at Basel, and in 1556 at
Aethiopice. We have no further accounts of the Antwerp. The edition of Commelinus was relife of Heliodorus. (Phot. Cod. 73.) printed at Lyon in 1611, 8vo., and at Frankfort in
His romance is in ten books, and is entitled 1631, 8vo. This last edition, by Daniel Pareus,
-Aet]hiopica, because the scene of the beginning and was the first divided into chapters. The edition of
the end of the story is laid in Aethiopia. It relates Bourdelot, Paris, 1619, 8vo., is full of errors, and
the loves of Theagenes and Charicleia. Persine, the notes are of little value. The edition of Peter
the wife of Hydaspes, king of Aethiopia, bore a Schmid, Lips. 1772, 8vo., only differs from that of
fdaugnter, whose complexion, through the effect of Bourdelot by the introduction of new errors. At
a Greek statue on the queen's mind, was white. length, in 1799, an excellent edition of the, text
Fearing that this circumstance might cause her and Latin version, with a few notes, chiefly critical,
husband to doubt her fidelity, she resolved to ex- appeared in Mitscherlich's Scripitores Graeci Eropose the child, and committed her, with tokens by tici, of which it forms the 2d volume, in two parts,
which she might afterwards be known, to Sisimi- 8vo. Argentorat. anno VI. A still better edition
thras, a gymnosophist, who, being sent on an em- was brought out in 1804, at Paris, by the learned
bassy into Egypt, took the child with him, and Greek Coraes, at the expense of his friend, Alexgave her to Charicles, the Pythian priest, who hap- ander Basilius, in 2 vols. 8vo. The first volume
pened to be in Egypt. Charicles took the child to contains an introduction, in modern Greek, in the
Delphi, where he brought her up as his own form of' a letter to Alexander Basilius, and the
daughter, by the name of Charicleia, and made her text, with various readings. The second volume
priestess of Apollo. In course of -time there came contains notes in ancient Greek, and other illustrato Delphi a noble Thessalian, descended from the tive rmatter.
Aeacidae, and named Theageiles, between whom The Aet/liopica has been translated into nearly
and Charicleia a mutual love sprung up at first all modern languages. (Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol.
sight. At the same time Calasiris, an Egyptian viii. p. 111; the Prefaces of Mitscherlich and Copriest, whom the queen of Aethiopia had employed raes; Jacobs, in Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopaidie,
to seek for her daughter, happened to arrive at s. v.; Hoffmann, Lex. Bibliog. Script. Graec. s. v,.)
Delphi; and by his help Theagenes carried off There is an iambic poem, in 269 verses, on the
Charicleia. Then follows a long and rapid series art of making gold, which is attributed by a MS.
of perilous adventures, from pirates and other law- in the royal library at Paris to Heliodorus the
less men, till at last the chief persons of the story bishop of Tricca. It exists in MS. in several librameet at Meroie, at the very moment when Chari- ries in Europe, and is printed, from the Paris MS.,
cleia, who has fallen as a captive into her father's in Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. viii. p. 119. The title
hands, is about to be sacrificed to the gods: she is is'HAtoacUpov (phAoio'mqov Wrpis eosdo-10v Tryd /Ayeav
made known by the tokens and by the testimony Bacmrea, 7rep!?Tos m;v 0pAqOnPoWV MvaUTLKj9s'EXv71s
of Sisimithras, and the lovers are happily married. (i. e. Alchymy), m''IdMcwv. Kiihn and Hoffmann
Though very deficient in those characteristics of (Lex. Bibl. s. v.) believe the poem to be genuine,
modem fiction which appeal to the universal sym- but Jacobs calls it the clumsy fabrication of a later
pathies of our nature, the romance of Heliodorus is time, to which the name of Theodosius was prefixed
extremely interesting on account of the rapid suc- to give it the semblance of authority; and he sugcession of strange and not altogether improbable gests that the name Heliodorus may have been,adventures, the many and various characters intro- used, after the fashion of the Alchymists and Rosiduced, and the beautiful scenes described. The crucians, on account of its etymological signification.
opening scene is admirable, and the point of the (Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopiidie, s. v.)
story at which it occurs is very well chosen. The V. SCIENTIFIC. 1. Of Larissa, the author of a
language is simple and elegant, though it is some- little work on optics, entitled Kepdaita a rcv'Oirtimes too diffuse, and often deviates from the pure TlK:v&, which seems to be a fragment or abridgement
-Attic standard. The whole work, as compared of the larger work, which is entitled in some MSS.