It's the ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's podcast

we're going back to ancient literature and a particular form of literature that was

really, really popular in the Roman Imperial period. Now this was the ancient Greek novel,

these love stories from antiquity. But as you're going to find out, it's so much more than

just Greece, the geography, the structure, the style of these stories, it's incredible.

Now I was delighted to get on the show, the one the only professor Tim Wittmarsh from the

University of Cambridge. Tim, great speaker, he is a leading expert on the ancient Greek novel,

he's written a book all about it and was great to get him on the podcast. So that further ado,

here's Tim. Tim, thanks for coming on the show. It's a real pleasure.

Now the ancient Greek novel, this is as we were just chatting before we started, this is a remarkable

form of literature that became culturally fluid and flexible. Well also culturally central as

well I'd say. I mean this is a the dominant literary form of the first four centuries AD or

CE if you prefer. So it's the Greek literature of the Roman Imperial period and probably the first

genuinely imaginative Greek literary form that was born into a world of books as well. So it's

completely different in its feel and its mode of circulation from earlier Greek literature.

It's designed to travel around the Roman Empire and exploit all the sort of connectivity of roads

and peaceful seaways and that sort of thing and we can see that it travels because we know that

for example, Carousine's Calyroy, the earliest Greek novel composed probably in the mid first

century CE within 60, 70 years, papyrus turned up in Egypt even though it's composed in modern

Turkey and Asia Minor. So it's traveling hundreds of miles in a very short space of time. So as I say,

a completely different form of Greek literature composed and created for a different era and has

that cultural fluidity and flexibility built into it because it's designed to travel. And because

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