Achilles Tatius: Encyclopedia II - Achilles Tatius - Life and minor works

Achilles Tatius - Life and minor works

Very little is known of the author; and the little which is known from the sources, represented by Photius and the Suda, are often misleading. This is the case with Heliodorus' romance Aethiopica, which the Suda erroneously places in the 5th century CE and considers the source of Leucippe and Cleitophon; far from it, modern scholars believe, on the ground of papyrus finds connected to the latter romance, that the author must have lived between the second half of the 2nd century and the first half of the 3rd century. Instead, it is generally accepted that he was a rhetorician of Alexandria.

The Suda also ascribes to the author a work on the sphere (in Greek περι σφαιρας), a fragment of which professing to be an introduction to the Phaenomena of Aratus is still extant (in Greek Eισαγoγη εις τα Aρατoυ φαινoμενα). This work is referred to by Firmicus Maternus, who about 336 speaks of the prudentissimus Achilles in his Matheseos libri (Math. iv. 10). The work itself is considered of no particular value. The fragment was first published in 1567, then in the Uranologion of the Jesuit scholar Dionysius Petavius, with a Latin translation in 1630. The same source also mentions a work of Achilles Tatius on etymology, and another entitled Miscellaneous Histories; as both are lost, it is impossible to determine which Achilles was their author.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Life and minor works", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki