Rome in the Greek Novel? Images and Ideas of Empire in Chariton's Persia.

This article discusses Rome in the Greek novel "Chaereas and Callirhoe." The Greek novelists, like other Greek writers of the imperial era, inherited from the texts and traditions of the classical period a template that divided the world into "Greek" and "barbarian." From a Greek perspective, Rome occupied an ambiguous position in this dichotomy. After emperor Alexander, Greek identity lost its rootedness in the landscape of Greece and became something that could be acquired through education. Rome's presence outside of the spatial and temporal frames of the extant Greek novels brings perspective to representations of other empires—in particular, the Persian empire. Persia stood for the "other" in classical Greek thought. Roman emperors deployed an Orientalist paradigm to position themselves, and Rome in general, as the champions of civilization in the face of ongoing barbarian aggression in the east.