Valeria Spacciante, Columbia University
The heroine’s apparent death is a common narrative pattern in the “ideal” novels – Chariton, Achilles Tatius, and Heliodorus display at least one scene where the male protagonist believes his beloved to be dead and laments over her body (Chall. 1.5.1-2; Leuc. 3.15, 5.7, 7.3-4; Aeth. 2.4.1-4). However, her death is illusory – the audience soon finds out that the woman is alive, usually because another woman died in her place. Heliodorus’ Aethiopica offers the most extensive narrative of the heroine’s apparent death (1.28.1-2.11.5), which has recently received new attention from scholars (Owens 2020, Grethlein 2022, Morales 2022). Inspired by the work of Froma Zeitlin 1996 and Helene Foley 2001 on the disruptive role of female agents in tragedy, I argue that this sequence in Heliodorus’ novel appropriates tragic patterns and common places to challenge and subvert tragic storylines. My paper also builds upon parallel insights by Finkelpearl 2014 and Holzmeister 2014, who have argued that the heroines in the novel tend to destabilize and challenge tradition by exposing the physical violence which they undergo. This reading is also inspired by John Winkler 1990’s reading of the novels “against the grain”, as well as Helen Morales 2008’s claim that the ancient novels epitomize sexual violence. However, escaping tragedy still represents a privilege, given that Charicleia’s survival depends on the death of the enslaved woman Thisbe.
Scholars have acknowledged that Heliodorus’ scenes parodically rework tragic commonplaces (Anderson 1982, Fusillo 1989, Whitmarsh 2011, Létoublon 2014). Aethiopica 1. 25, for example, shares similarities with Antigone 1223-43: Charicleia is shut in a cave by Thyamis and later appears to have been killed by him (1.30-31). When her lover Theagenes reaches the cave, he bursts out in a “tragic” (τραγικόν – 2.4.1) lamentation and decides to kill himself: he clings onto a body (which he assumes is Charicleia’s) as if “pushed by some force” (2.3.4). Shortly after, he finds out that she is still alive – and that he mistook the slave Thisbe for her. As soon as she sees Theagenes, Charicleia’s behavior pivots the general tone away from tragedy and reorients the scene toward erotic plots: she collapses on him (2.6.3) and calls the dead slave “happy” (μακαρίζω, 2.8.1), because she had the privilege of being kissed by her lover. Charicleia’s response not only undermines the tragic event of Thisbe’s death, but also displaces the tragic setting in favor of the lovers’ happy reconciliation.
In conclusion, I argue that Heliodorus’ apparent-death scene can be read as destabilizing normative discourse around tragic models of conduct as well as providing a liminal space from which to rewrite literary conventions which would otherwise be deadly for women. However, by relying on the death of a female slave, this rewriting only benefits the female protagonist and therefore ultimately reiterates the physical risk that women undergo in the novel.