[In the following essay, Blake explains why Chariton can be considered the earliest known Greek novelist.]

In an age when, as the book-dealers tell us, over seventy-five per cent of the annual output of literature consists of novels, it must have occurred to many people to wonder who stands first in time at the head of this army of countless thousands of novelists. It is, of course, futile to speak of the “inventor” of the novel. Specialized mechanical inventions, such as the electric light, the steam engine, and even the printing press, may with accuracy be attributed to certain definite great geniuses. But in the less tangible realm of literature it is exceedingly difficult and generally impossible to put one's finger on a single name and to say, “So-and-so discovered the use of rhyme in poetry,” or “So-and-so wrote the first essay,” or “So-and-so invented the novel.” Such things are not invented. They grow imperceptibly out of earlier forms with seemingly chance modifications determined by the taste and the feeling of the age which produces them. If the origin of the novel lies in the innate love of mankind for presenting in verbal form a fictitious picture of his external surroundings and his own emotions, then I suppose the first novel might ultimately be traced back to the Garden of Eden. In this matter, then, we can only study what is preserved to us as the earliest example containing the essential features of the novel as we know it today, i.e., a fictitious prose narrative of definite proportions portraying for the pleasure of the reader an ostensibly genuine picture of real life.

Our search for this earliest example in our Western World leads us back to the ancient Greeks, who here, as in most intellectual matters, are our great innovators and teachers. It is not surprising that this great people which has given the world the first perfected epic poem, the first highly developed drama, and the first scientific history, should also have produced the first extended work of fiction resembling our modern type. It is surprising that the fact should be so little recognized.

In singling out Chariton as the first European novelist, we present, then, not the first Greek writer in the field of fiction, but the man who so far developed the novel type that his work has survived the waves of destruction which have overwhelmed the less perfected endeavors of his many predecessors. It is only within the present generation, indeed, that Chariton has gained his rightful place as the earliest of the extant Greek novelists. Although his work had been known and published in modern times for one hundred and fifty years, up to 1900 he had been erroneously supposed to be among the latest of these writers, and his date had been set, purely by guess-work, since practically nothing is known of his life, at about 500 a.d. In 1900 certain papyrus fragments of his novel were discovered in Egypt, and still another, ten years later. The date of these pieces of ancient paper may be set not much later than 200 a.d. Inasmuch as they were found in a small country town to which new works would not be likely to penetrate immediately on publication, especially in an age when reproduction of books was by the slow and expensive process of copying by hand, we are justified in setting back the time of writing of the original twenty-five or even fifty years more. Hence if we make the reasonable assumption that Chariton composed his work about 150 a.d., we see that this first novel is now about 1780 years old, a venerable age—in fact only about one hundred years younger than most of the books of the New Testament.

What is the nature of the novel produced, widely read, and preserved fifty-four generations ago? As one might expect, it is a love-story. The full title is this: “Eight Books [or, as we would say, chapters] of the love story of Chaereas and Callirrhoë.” It extends over one hundred and fifty-seven pages of closely printed Greek text. In order to give some idea of the previous literary elements out of which this novel was compounded and also to show how many of these elements, after being fused together by Chariton, survive in our modern literature of the novel, I must give a brief summary of the plot:

The noble Chaereas and the beautiful Callirrhoë of Syracuse are married with great splendor. Former rivals of Chaereas succeed in rousing him to a jealous rage against his young bride. This results in his striking her so violently that she is given up as dead. After her interment pirates rob the tomb and find that Callirrhoë, the heroine, is not dead but just recovering from her unconscious state. They sail off with her and the rich funeral trappings to Miletus to sell her as a slave. She is purchased by the agent of the ruler Dionysius who, smitten by her unearthly beauty, offers to make her his wife. Callirrhoë, torn between her love for her former husband and her desire that her unborn child shall have a powerful protector in the person of the great Dionysius, at length consents. Meantime the Syracusans capture the grave-robbing pirate and learn of Callirrhoë's fate. Chaereas, her husband, tortured by remorse, joins the expedition to Miletus to win her back. He is captured and sent off as a slave to another potentate of Asia Minor, Mithridates. Dionysius informs Callirrhoë that Chaereas is dead—slain by pirates. To comfort her he has an elaborate monument set up to the memory of Chaereas. At the dedication exercises there appears in Miletus among many others Mithridates, whose unknown slave Chaereas now is. The fatal beauty of Callirrhoë inflames Mithridates also. On his return home he learns the identity of his captive, Chaereas. Thus we have this highly dramatic situation: Chaereas, the living first husband, is the slave of Mithridates, the would-be rival of Dionysius, the second husband of Callirrhoë—a decided improvement on the standard modern triangle. This marks the high point in the complication of the plot. The solution is equally ingenious.

Chaereas writes to Callirrhoë an appealing letter which is intercepted by Dionysius. The latter, sincerely believing Chaereas is dead, thinks it a device of Mithridates to alienate his wife's affections and appeals for justice to the Great King of Persia. Both he and Mithridates are now summoned to trial at the court of the Great King in Babylon. Dionysius obeys, bringing Callirrhoë with him, and Mithridates also appears, secretly accompanied by Chaereas. The trial scene is highly dramatic. Dionysius accuses Mithridates of attempting to steal his wife. Mithridates counters with the charge that Dionysius himself has taken another man's wife and introduces as a great surprise the star witness, Chaereas himself. Mithridates is thus acquitted and eliminated from this four-sided triangle, and the real opposition lies between Chaereas and Dionysius. Before their trial takes place, war suddenly breaks out in Egypt coincidentally with the restoration of the eliminated fourth side in the person of the Great King himself, who no more than the other two can withstand the appeal of the excellent Callirrhoë. The Great King marches off to put down the revolt in Egypt, taking with him his whole household—and Callirrhoë. Dionysius dutifully returns home to take his part in the war, and Chaereas, left alone in Babylon, sees his chance for revenge on his latest and most noble rival by joining the forces of the Egyptians. He is intrusted with an important command and proves an energetic leader. In fact, as you might suspect, he captures the camp of the Great King and finds there not only the Great Queen but also Callirrhoë herself. Recognition and blissful reconciliations follow. Peace is restored. The Great Queen is magnanimously returned to the Great King. Callirrhoë writes a consoling and grateful letter to Dionysius, and then she and the valiant hero Chaereas return to Syracuse in a blaze of glory.

Such is the story. In characterizing its structure we may at once note two things: the great variety of incidents, of which only those most pertinent to the plot have been retained here, and the almost exclusive preoccupation with people of high rank. In these respects as well as in the semihistorical nature of the characters, though not of the incidents, Chariton anticipates the mediaeval romance and the historical novels of Scott. Chariton himself derives these features from two previous types of literature. One is the so-called Milesian tale, a popular sort of narrative that includes many wild and often supernatural incidents with an undercurrent of great coarseness. The other is an offshoot of true history, that is, the popularized historical legend, which appears most clearly in the Alexander cycle. From the Milesian tale Chariton extracts the adventuresome variety, with its paraphernalia of piracy, tomb-robbery, shipwrecks, and wide travel, but leaves out the strictly supernatural and most of the coarseness. From the pseudo-historical and biographical legends he seeks to obtain additional plausibility by connecting his story with great names of the past, and in his descriptions of settings and in his battle scenes strives to emulate the dignity of classical history.

In the predominating love-motive he is the first to use in a comparatively refined and delicate way, with a genuine if undeveloped sense of psychological values, that feature which ever since has become practically indispensable in all novel writing. Before his time the love theme does not appear in prose except in a most degraded form. Indeed, outside the classical lyrics and the Alexandrian elegy, idealized human love scarcely appears in literature. The nearest approach to it is in the sophisticated treatment in the so-called New Comedy. It is to the great credit of Chariton that he first introduced into the novel this most fruitful theme and handled it in a manner which, though still a little crude, is much superior to that both of his predecessors and of his immediate successors.

In this product of the second century of our era we may see presented with prodigal profuseness and in somewhat sensational form most of the subject matter and many of the devices which have become traditional in our modern novel literature.