reatise on
the sphere--has been preserved. He adds, that he was a pagan when he
wrote "Clitophon and Leucippe," but late in life embraced
Christianity, and even became a bishop. This latter statement,
however, is unsupported by any other authority, and would seem to be
opposed by the negative testimony of the patriarch Photius, who (in
his famous _Bibliotheca_, 118, 130) passes a severe censure on the
immorality of certain passages in the works of Tatius, and would
scarcely have omitted to inveigh against the further scandal of their
having proceeded from the pen of an ecclesiastic. "In style and
composition this work is of high excellence; the periods are generally
well rounded and perspicuous, and gratify the ear by their harmony ...
but, except in the names of the personages, and the unpardonable
breaches of decorum of which he is guilty, the author appears to have
closely copied Heliodorus both in the plan and execution of his
narrative." In another passage, when treating of the _Babylonica_[1]
of Iamblichus, he repeats this condemnation:--"Of these three
principal writers of amorous tales. Heliodorus has treated the subject
with due gravity and decorum. Iamblichus is not so unexceptionable on
these points; and Achilles Tatius is still worse, in his eight books
of _Clitophon and Leucippe_, the very diction of which is soft and
effeminate, as if intended to relax the vigour of the reader's mind."
This last denunciation of the patriarch, however, is somewhat too
sweeping and indiscriminate, since, though some passages are certainly
indefensible, they appear rather as interpolations, and are in no
manner connected with the main thread of the story, the general
tendency of which is throughout innocent and moral; and whatever may
be said of these blemishes, it must be allowed that the pages of
Achilles Tatius are purity itself when compared with the depravity of
Longus, and some of his followers and imitators among the Greek
romancists.

[1] This work is now lost, and we know it only by the abstract
given by Photius in the passage quoted.

The period of time at which the adventures of _Clitophon and Leucippe_
are supposed to take place, appears to be in the later ages of Grecian
independence, when the successors of Alexander reigned in Syria and
Egypt, and the colonized cities in Thrace and Asia Minor still
preserved their municipal liberties. The story is related in the first
person by the hero himself; a mod