Here is the relevant text for convenience:andrewcriddle wrote: ↑Sat Apr 07, 2018 4:40 amSee Novel in the Ancient WorldNathan wrote: ↑Thu Apr 05, 2018 6:14 pmJohn J. Winkler has this to say in the introduction to his translation:Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Thu Apr 05, 2018 5:13 pm The Loeb edition is here: https://ryanfb.github.io/loebolus-data/L045.pdf. The introduction dates the novel to the end of century III. However, papyrus Oxyrhynchus 3836 had not yet been published. Perhaps the date was pushed back to century II solely to accommodate that papyrus. I do not know for certain what would prevent an earlier date, as I am not very familiar with this Greek novel.
Evidence of papyri on the one side and of Hellenic hairstyles and Alexandrian topography on the other suggests that The Adventures of Leukippe and Kleitophon (Leukippe, for short) was written in the third quarter of the second century C.E.
Karl Plepelits, "Achilles Tatius," in Gareth L. Schmeling, The Novel in the Ancient World, pages 388-390:
As regards the dating of Achilles Tatius, until the beginning of the 20th century no clue whatsoever was to be found. He was usually dated to the 4th, the 5th, or even the 6th century. It was however always agreed that the was an imitator of Heliodorus and therefore to be dated later than he. The same opinion was already held by the Byzantine critics. The only exception was F. Ast, who in the epilogue to his German translation of Leucippe and Clitophon designated Achilles Tatius as the older, Heliodorus as the younger.
He was to prove to have been in the right. The change was brought about, in two stages, by the papyri. The first papyrus fragment from Leucippe and Clitophon was published in 1914; it dates, as the forms of the letters indicate, from the end of the 3rd or the beginning of the 4th century. This instantly made the hitherto universally accepted dating to the latest antiquity untenable. Nevertheless, Achilles Tatius was still unanimously considered to be an imitator of Heliodorus; as the latter is dated to the second quarter of the 3rd century by most scholars, Achilles Tatius was now dated to the second half of the 3rd century. But how big was the surprise when in 1938 a second papyrus was published, which the papyrologists unanimously attribute to the 2nd century! This was tantamount to a downright revolution, because it not only made the dating to the late 3rd century untenable, but in particular suddenly reversed the temporal succession Heliodorus—Achilles Tatius and brilliantly rehabilitated the latter from the accusation of slavish imitation so often brought against him. In the meantime more papyrus fragments from Leucippe and Clitophon have been discovered or attributed to it. Most of them date from the 3rd century and are therefore no longer relevant to its dating; one, however, published only in 1989, dates equally from the 2nd century, thus corroborating the new findings.
Thus a terminus ante quem was gained. As regards a terminus post quem, the text itself provides two clues. One of them is the passage at 2.18.3, where eight men disguised as women are referred to: they are wearing women's clothes and have shaved off their beards. The latter remark, however, is meaningful only if men normally grow beards. Now, we know that both in Greek lands and in Italy from about 300 B. C., apart from short exceptions, beardlessness was the general custom. It ended with emperor Hadrian (A.D. 117-138), who grew a beard, allegedly for the purpose of covering natural scars that disfigured his facethus his biographer. From that time the emperors and after their example the mass of the adult male population with the only exceptions of Caracalla (212-217) and Elagabalus (218-222) were bearded for almost two centuries, until in the early 4th century Constantine introduced beardlessness again. The change of fashion under Hadrian was so thorough that Cassius Dio, who wrote his Roman History at the turn from the 2nd to the 3rd century, felt obliged to explain the statement that emperor Trajan (A.D. 98117) was having his beard shaved by the words: "For this was from of old the custom of all other men and also the emperors themselves; for it was only Hadrian who introduced the beard." Since Hadrian, according to pictorial representations from the time before his accession to the throne, seems to have grown a beard even then, it is surely legitimate to suppose that the change of fashion took place immediately with his accession. However, the naturalness with which it is taken for granted that men normally grow beards admits of the conclusion that since the introduction of the new fashion quite a long time must have elapsed.
The other clue was already recognized by Ch. Picard; unfortunately it is not absolutely certain. It is furnished by the description of Alexandria at 5.1: Clitophon is narrating how he entered the city by the "so-called Sun-Gate" and was immediately dazzled by the beauty of the perfectly straight colonnaded street reaching from the Sun-Gate to the MoonGate. This is the earliest reference to these particular gates; the one next in time belongs to the 4th century. John Malalas (6th century) reports about them as follows: "Antoninus Pius (138-161) made war upon the Egyptians, who had committed violence and murdered the governor Dinarchus, and after the punishment and the victory he built in Alexandria, the big city, having come there, the Sun-Gate and the Moon-Gate and the colonnaded street."
Obviously the building activities referred to by Malalas can at best have been a restoration of structures that had already existed before but had perhaps suffered in the course of the riots or hostilities. The salient point here is the question whether the two city gates had already been called Sun-Gate and Moon-Gate before or were renamed so on the occasion of their restoration. The question cannot be decided with absolute certainty, but it seems as if the wording of Malalas' report spoke rather in favour of the latter possibility. Add to this the fact observed by J. Vogt that emperor Antoninus Pius and his consort Faustina are frequently conceived as sun god and moon goddess, particularly in pictorial representations, but also in written sources. Moreover, by naming the governor murdered by the Egyptians, Malalas enables us to determine a little more precisely the date of the events in question. Unfortunately, this particular Dinarchus is not known to us by any other source. For his term of office, therefore, we have to take into consideration all those periods for which as yet no other governors are testified. These are the intervals between 26 August 142 and 12 May 144, between 11 November 148 and 17 April 150, and the year 153 until 28 August 154 at the latest. Vogt himself dates the disturbances Dinarchus fell a victim to "with great probability" to the years 153 and 154. But whatever the exact historical details, the reference to the Sun-Gate and Moon-Gate seems to provide a terminus post quem about the middle of the 2nd century.
As a consequence, it seems appropriate to date Achilles Tatius and his novel roughly to the second half of the 2nd century or, in view of the papyri written in the same century, somewhat more precisely to the third quarter of the 2nd century.
As regards the dating of Achilles Tatius, until the beginning of the 20th century no clue whatsoever was to be found. He was usually dated to the 4th, the 5th, or even the 6th century. It was however always agreed that the was an imitator of Heliodorus and therefore to be dated later than he. The same opinion was already held by the Byzantine critics. The only exception was F. Ast, who in the epilogue to his German translation of Leucippe and Clitophon designated Achilles Tatius as the older, Heliodorus as the younger.
He was to prove to have been in the right. The change was brought about, in two stages, by the papyri. The first papyrus fragment from Leucippe and Clitophon was published in 1914; it dates, as the forms of the letters indicate, from the end of the 3rd or the beginning of the 4th century. This instantly made the hitherto universally accepted dating to the latest antiquity untenable. Nevertheless, Achilles Tatius was still unanimously considered to be an imitator of Heliodorus; as the latter is dated to the second quarter of the 3rd century by most scholars, Achilles Tatius was now dated to the second half of the 3rd century. But how big was the surprise when in 1938 a second papyrus was published, which the papyrologists unanimously attribute to the 2nd century! This was tantamount to a downright revolution, because it not only made the dating to the late 3rd century untenable, but in particular suddenly reversed the temporal succession Heliodorus—Achilles Tatius and brilliantly rehabilitated the latter from the accusation of slavish imitation so often brought against him. In the meantime more papyrus fragments from Leucippe and Clitophon have been discovered or attributed to it. Most of them date from the 3rd century and are therefore no longer relevant to its dating; one, however, published only in 1989, dates equally from the 2nd century, thus corroborating the new findings.
Thus a terminus ante quem was gained. As regards a terminus post quem, the text itself provides two clues. One of them is the passage at 2.18.3, where eight men disguised as women are referred to: they are wearing women's clothes and have shaved off their beards. The latter remark, however, is meaningful only if men normally grow beards. Now, we know that both in Greek lands and in Italy from about 300 B. C., apart from short exceptions, beardlessness was the general custom. It ended with emperor Hadrian (A.D. 117-138), who grew a beard, allegedly for the purpose of covering natural scars that disfigured his facethus his biographer. From that time the emperors and after their example the mass of the adult male population with the only exceptions of Caracalla (212-217) and Elagabalus (218-222) were bearded for almost two centuries, until in the early 4th century Constantine introduced beardlessness again. The change of fashion under Hadrian was so thorough that Cassius Dio, who wrote his Roman History at the turn from the 2nd to the 3rd century, felt obliged to explain the statement that emperor Trajan (A.D. 98117) was having his beard shaved by the words: "For this was from of old the custom of all other men and also the emperors themselves; for it was only Hadrian who introduced the beard." Since Hadrian, according to pictorial representations from the time before his accession to the throne, seems to have grown a beard even then, it is surely legitimate to suppose that the change of fashion took place immediately with his accession. However, the naturalness with which it is taken for granted that men normally grow beards admits of the conclusion that since the introduction of the new fashion quite a long time must have elapsed.
The other clue was already recognized by Ch. Picard; unfortunately it is not absolutely certain. It is furnished by the description of Alexandria at 5.1: Clitophon is narrating how he entered the city by the "so-called Sun-Gate" and was immediately dazzled by the beauty of the perfectly straight colonnaded street reaching from the Sun-Gate to the MoonGate. This is the earliest reference to these particular gates; the one next in time belongs to the 4th century. John Malalas (6th century) reports about them as follows: "Antoninus Pius (138-161) made war upon the Egyptians, who had committed violence and murdered the governor Dinarchus, and after the punishment and the victory he built in Alexandria, the big city, having come there, the Sun-Gate and the Moon-Gate and the colonnaded street."
Obviously the building activities referred to by Malalas can at best have been a restoration of structures that had already existed before but had perhaps suffered in the course of the riots or hostilities. The salient point here is the question whether the two city gates had already been called Sun-Gate and Moon-Gate before or were renamed so on the occasion of their restoration. The question cannot be decided with absolute certainty, but it seems as if the wording of Malalas' report spoke rather in favour of the latter possibility. Add to this the fact observed by J. Vogt that emperor Antoninus Pius and his consort Faustina are frequently conceived as sun god and moon goddess, particularly in pictorial representations, but also in written sources. Moreover, by naming the governor murdered by the Egyptians, Malalas enables us to determine a little more precisely the date of the events in question. Unfortunately, this particular Dinarchus is not known to us by any other source. For his term of office, therefore, we have to take into consideration all those periods for which as yet no other governors are testified. These are the intervals between 26 August 142 and 12 May 144, between 11 November 148 and 17 April 150, and the year 153 until 28 August 154 at the latest. Vogt himself dates the disturbances Dinarchus fell a victim to "with great probability" to the years 153 and 154. But whatever the exact historical details, the reference to the Sun-Gate and Moon-Gate seems to provide a terminus post quem about the middle of the 2nd century.
As a consequence, it seems appropriate to date Achilles Tatius and his novel roughly to the second half of the 2nd century or, in view of the papyri written in the same century, somewhat more precisely to the third quarter of the 2nd century.
I overlooked the 1938 papyrus which Plepelits mentions. Not sure yet which one that is.