59 The Ancient Novels w/ Doug Metzger (Apuleius, Lucian, Chariton, Heliodorus, Petronius, Achilles Tatius)
Ancient Greece Declassified
Dr. Lantern Jack
4.8 • 587 Ratings
🗓️ 1 March 2025
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Unveiling the wild world of ancient Greek and Roman novels with Doug Metzger, host of the "Literature and History Podcast."
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Contents of the episode, with timestamps:
04:22 When did novels first arise?
09:12 The four genres of ancient novels
11:39 The typical plot (Callirhoe)
17:55 Daphnis and Chloe
21:10 Euripides' romances
28:17 Narrative in the Bible
32:43 Evolution of the ancient novel
34:27 Leucippe and Clitophon
35:47 Heliodorus' Aethiopica
37:35 Lucian and the influence on modernity
43:08 The Second Sophistic
47:14 Greek VS Roman novels
53:44 The X-rated stuff
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Warning, the following program contains discussions of some very dirty literature. |
| 0:05.2 | We'll be talking about the oldest novels in history. |
| 0:08.0 | It just so happens that those pioneering works of literature were often X-rated. |
| 0:13.4 | Now, for those of us who still read books in this day and age, the novel is probably the archetypal form of literature. |
| 0:19.8 | The novel has been the most popular |
| 0:21.7 | fictional medium for several centuries now. We learn in school that the novel is a product of |
| 0:28.0 | the modern world, and by modern I mean like post-renaissance. But is it really true? Today we'll be |
| 0:34.4 | speaking to somebody who claims that this standard origin story of the novel |
| 0:37.8 | is in fact a fiction and that novels not only existed thousands of years ago but you can still |
| 0:43.7 | read and enjoy depending on your temperament those novels today. |
| 0:53.4 | Hi, thanks for tuning in to ancient Greece, Declassified. |
| 1:02.2 | Episode 59. |
| 1:04.4 | The Ancient Novels. |
| 1:15.8 | So I know I promised you guys The Mysticles Part 3, and we will get to that next time. But I just was visited a couple weeks ago by my friend Doug Metzger, host of the Literature and |
| 1:20.6 | History Podcast, as many of you are aware. |
| 1:23.1 | And he just finished a lengthy deep dive into the ancient novels, which is a topic I've always wanted |
| 1:28.8 | to know more about. |
| 1:30.2 | And so I couldn't resist having a sit down conversation with him. |
| 1:33.9 | We recorded it with video as well. |
| 1:36.0 | So if you prefer to watch, you can go to YouTube.com slash lanternjack and find the most recent |
| 1:40.7 | video. |
| 1:41.5 | And if you just prefer the podcast in your ear as you go about your |
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