In this book the author of Eros Sophistes hopes to afford laymen an introduction to the ancient novelist as serious artist, while to specialists he addresses technical discussions about the novel's origins and its relation to far older texts as well as about the impact of recently discovered papyri and cuneiform tablets upon our understanding of the genre's development. It is difficult to write a study which will speak simultaneously to both neophyte and scholar, doubly difficult when the subject matter until recently has been neglected even by the professional, who tended to assign Longus, Achilles Tatius, and Heliodorus to the literary periphery. Disappointingly, this book is only a mixed success: the layman will find much bewildering, while the specialist will find its positive aspects hedged with reservation.