Arguing its relevance in historiography, and its connection with the related concept of the classic, this chapter examines the place of the canon in history: its formation, key turning points, convenience, usefulness, and the desirability of its existence itself. In the first part of the chapter (‘Constructions’), I examine the five main turning points in the formation of the canon in history: Greco-Roman, Collingwood-Croce, narrative history of the 1970s, gender and postcolonial, and global canon. The second part of the chapter (‘Canonizing’) examines three case studies of the canon in history: Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Macaulay’s History of England and White’s Metahistory. The third part (‘Resistances’) explores the rejection of the canon among historians, describes some of its manifestations and reflects on its motivations. The fourth part (‘Paradoxes’) details the main characteristics of the historical canon, points out the differences among other canons such as the literary and artistic, and explores the peculiar combination of art and science that every historical operation entails. The conclusive section (‘Inescapability’) argues for the great paradox of the canon: the impossibility of conducting cultural and intellectual exchanges without it.

This chapter explores links between Antonius Diogenes and Petronius. It notes features shared between ‘The incredible things beyond Thule’ and the Satyrica: their twenty-four-book format, their element of comedy, the location and extent of their characters’ travels, and the types of incident they encountered. Of three possibilities – that Antonius Diogenes knew the Satyrica, that the author of the Satyrica knew Antonius Diogenes, and that both drew on a common source – it suggests that the first, entailing Antonius Diogenes’ knowledge of Latin, is least likely. The second option would place ‘The incredible things beyond Thule’ ca. AD 55, shortly after the publication of Chariton’s Callirhoe and before that of Petronius’ Satyrica. As to the third possibility, although on Jensson’s hypothesis of a lost Greek original for the Satyrica some of the novels’ shared features might derive from a Milesian-tale narrative, the pursuit of the hero and his companion by a powerful and vengeful force, the death of the arch-villain, and the location in the bay of Naples and south Italy have no parallel in any known Greek ‘low’ narratives.

This chapter surveys Greek writing of 31 BC–AD 270 that might have impinged on the novels, or been somehow influenced by them. In 31 BC–AD 50, before any known novels, little that might have impacted a novelist writing in AD 50 can be seen in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Nicolaus of Damascus or Strabo, or in hexameter poetry: but erotic epigrams, especially those of Rufinus (writing ca. AD 40–60, apparently in Asia Minor near the novels’ birthplace), may have caught novelists’ eyes. In AD 50–160 sophistic rhetoric’s explosion encouraged fictionality in declamation and in the imaginative scenarios of Dio’s Euboean, Trojan and Borysthenitic speeches. An erotic theme was central to the Araspas, lover of Pantheia, by Dionysius of Miletus or Caninius Celer. Plutarch comes near to a mini-novel in his story of young Bacchon’s kidnapping in his Ἐρωτικός, and many Lives have novelistic cliff-hanging incidents. Achilles Tatius’ ‘scientific’ digressions chime with the popularity of paradoxography (Pamphila, Phlegon, and Favorinus). Between 160–220 Iamblichus’ Babyloniaca and Aelian’s Histories show paradoxography’s continued popularity; Lucian plays games with fictionality and himself wrote a novel. Pausanias, Athenaeus and Philostratus present tales of desire in a way improbable in a world without novels. Discussion of Heliodorus’ relation to other literature dominates assessment of AD 220–270.

This chapter compares two reading lists of Greek literature, one from the Augustan Age and one from the Second Sophistic: Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ On Imitation and Dio of Prusa’s letter On Training for Public Speaking (oration 18). Although several scholars have argued that the two lists are similar, this chapter argues that they are fundamentally different. Dionysius prefers Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Herodotus and Demosthenes, he ignores Hellenistic and imperial writers, and he demands that his students work hard. Dio recommends Menander, Euripides, Xenophon and Aeschines, he includes orators from the Augustan Age, and he tells his addressee that laborious training is not needed. In many points Dio’s reading list corresponds more closely to Quintilian’s contemporary canon (in Institutio oratoria book 10) than to Dionysius’ On Imitation. Three factors can explain the differences between the reading lists presented by Dionysius and Dio: their audiences, the literary preferences of the Augustan Age and the Flavian Age, and the genres of their works. Dionysius’ reading list is part of a serious rhetorical treatise which foregrounds the ‘beauty’ of classical Greek literature. Dio’s reading list is presented in a light-hearted letter which adopts a more pragmatic (and at times humoristic) approach to rhetorical imitation.

This chapter will offer a fresh interpretation of the importance of Dionysius’ rhetorical essays and in particular of the importance of his essay on Lysias for his critical work more generally. It will also revisit the question of the development in Dionysius’ rhetorical essays and argue that instead of seeing the essays progressing from one orator to another as an advancement of the critical competences of the author, it appears much more appropriate to view the progress from the perspective of a potential student. Dionysius emerges, then, as a writer and a teacher who is much more sensitive to the interests and abilities of his students than perhaps granted thus far.

Isocrates is another crucial pillar in Dionysius’ rhetorical edifice, whose influence extends primarily to his treatment of the educational and philosophical components of rhetoric. Dionysius gives the clearest account of the Isocratean flavour of his programme in his Isocrates, which is the second essay of the collection On the Ancient Orators. The structure of Isocrates is very similar to the previous work of the collection, Lysias, but in the course of the essay it becomes increasingly clear that Dionysius’ emphasis and interest in the orator are visibly different from the stylistic concerns which were such a prominent feature of the first essay. Dionysius sets up a new image of Isocrates, determined to show that he is not merely another orator on the list. We will see that Isocrates becomes a representative of the novel vision of education and rhetoric advocated by Dionysius and tailored to the particular political context of first-century BCE Rome.

Hellenistic criticism provides little material for my study; Chapter 5 tries to grasp why this is due not only to its scanty transmission. Neither critics who championed pleasure as the function of poetry nor the ekphrastic tradition seem to have taken an interest in apatē’s ambiguity. We find more evidence at the beginning of the Imperial era in the critical essays of Dionysus of Halicarnassus and in Philo’s polemics against a specific kind of rhetoric and myth. Only Philo, however, exploits apatē’s oscillation between aesthetic illusion and deception. Philo’s debts to Plato help us identify one reason for apatē’s decline in Hellenistic criticism: as some scholia illustrate, Plato’s criticism of poetry was well-known but was often felt to be less compelling than the ideas of other philosophical schools. With due caution, I also suggest that the waning interest in apatē is related to the emergence of the Hellenistic book-culture that made it easy to contemplate aesthetic issues independently of ethical issues.

As a famous representative of the Greek literary heritage, Sappho is both a source of tremendous literary meaning and recreation in the Imperial period, for e.g. Achilles Tatius and Longus, but at the same time an object of censure from Christian moralists, as in Tatian’s Oratio ad Graecos. Chapter 22 of The Cambridge Companion to Sappho discusses her transmission and reception as the ancient world began to change into a Christian one.

Catullus features heavily in Chapter 21 of The Cambridge Companion to Sappho, but he is by no means the only Roman literary figure to have found in Sappho an important predecessor. Ovid, Horace, and others give powerful evidence of her influence in Latin literature.