No doubt he was conscious himself of the improbability of the story and strove painfully to make it sound more likely, to weave it into a romance that would sound plausible.¹[The Brothers Karamazov, part IV, book XII, ch. 6.]

Regarding its style and creative approach to its earlier literary tradition, Heliodorus’ Aithiopika -usually dated to the third or fourth century CE²- is, apart from being the lengthiest and latest of the extant ancient Greek love novels, undoubtedly also the most ‘sophisticated’.³ For in the Aithiopika, Heliodorus of Emesa reworked the popular novel genre, generating a complex narrative architecture in ten books, which consist of a multi-layered plot that unfolds in an anachronic form:⁴ the homecoming of the princess Charicleia to Aithiopia. One of the central topics of the text is the virtually irresistible, and almost ‘divine’, beauty of both protagonists, Theagenes and Charicleia.⁵ From the beginning to the end of the novel, beauty has a strongly aesthetic, and thus a self-referential, value in Heliodorus, as the effect of κάλλος is related to the one which emanates from the shining sunlight.⁶ Compare, for example, the first words of the novel (1.1.1: Ἡµέρας ἄρτι διαγελώσης καὶ ἡλίου τὰς ἀκρωρείας καταυγάζοντος) with a later passage, where Charicleia’s garment radiates the brilliant sun: (1.2.5) πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον ἀνταυγαζούσης.⁷ Moreover, ‘beaming’ beauty is not only correlated with sun, but also with lightning.⁸ And eventually, as emerges from the final paratext of the novel (10.41.4),⁹ the author’s name, Heliodorus, may be appropriate for someone who calls himself a Descendant of the Sun and whose work praises the god Helios.

Earlier scholarship has essentially brought beauty in Heliodorus into line with Platonic concepts of the term and highlighted both its ethical value and even its metaphysical character.¹⁰ This view takes its starting point from the novelistic topos of focusing on the divine beauty of the protagonists, which indeed deserves discussion: according to Meike Keul-Deutscher, the concept of beauty in Heliodorus is, first, beyond all criticism, as its elements are associated with virtues such as εὐγένεια, αἰδώς, and σωφροσύνη. Secondly, beauty as an ideal concept in Heliodorus is according to her not only based on an ethical foundation, it is in addition even related to divine favour.¹¹ Thus, she places Heliodorus’ treatment of human beauty within the Platonic tradition, that is, as mainly oriented towards a philosophical ideal, as is maintained especially by Plato in his Theory of Forms and somewhat later Plotinus.¹² Thirdly, Keul-Deutscher distinguishes κάλλος as an ethical, quasi-religious phenomenon in Heliodorus’ novel from those written by the generic predecessors.¹³

In my view, however, beauty in the Aithiopika is not beyond all criticism in a way that Keul-Deutscher wants us to believe. Although the different psychological reactions of Heliodorus’ internal audiences to beauty (some react with awe and timidity, others with impertinence and without any inhibitions),¹⁴ could be harmonized by pointing to Plato’s Phaedrus as a model, where two types of souls are described in their different reactions to κάλλος (250e-251a),¹⁵ my article reveals that beauty in Heliodorus appears rather as a multidimensional aesthetic concept. This in turn leads me to a second critical thought: without completely excluding its ethical, especially Platonic, and religious dimensions, the concept of beauty is in addition and in particular related to aesthetic and rhetorical values and sensorial aspects, which earlier scholarship seems mostly to have underrated. Instead of simply elucidating ethical or metaphysical positions, Heliodorus rather plays knowingly with its own aesthetic effects, inviting its readership to reflect upon the multilayered mediations applied.

With this in mind, this article tries to throw into relief another, principally aesthetic, aspect of Heliodorean κάλλος.¹⁶ Beauty, as I argue, serves as a central hermeneutical keyword within Heliodorus’ novel: in a ­self-referential way, the text makes explicit the persuasive effect of its own descriptive passages, which becomes especially visible on the basis of the internal beholders’ perception of the main characters’ beauty. These internally conveyed reader responses offer to the external reader a corresponding type of reaction to the descriptive art of the author, by which the protagonists are in turn created.¹⁷ I will demonstrate the self-reflexive and sophisticated quality that is inherent in Heliodorean κάλλος by connecting the beauty of Theagenes and Charicleia and the use of κάλλος in rhetorical texts.

Let us start by looking more closely at Heliodorus’ text: wherever both young people show up, they arouse the emotions of their fellows and onlookers. This we can observe right from the opening scene of the novel, where the reader is presented with a visual introductory tableau.¹⁸ This tableau displays the scenery of a carnage which has taken place only a short time ago, and is internally focalized through the eyes of a band of Egyptian brigands,¹⁹ who do not understand at all what has happened or what is happening:

1.2.1. Ἤδη δὲ αὐτοῖς κεκινηκόσιν ἄποθεν µικρὸν τῆς τε νεὼς καὶ τῶν κειµένων θέαµα προσπίπτει τῶν προτέρων ἀπορώτερον· κόρη καθῆστο ἐπὶ πέτρας, ἀµήχανόν τι κάλλος καὶ θεὸς εἶναι ἀναπείθουσα, τοῖς µὲν παροῦσι περιαλγοῦσα φρονήµατος δὲ εὐγενοῦς ἔτι πνέουσα.²⁰

They had reached a point of short distance from the ship and the bodies when they found themselves confronted by a sight even more inexplicable than what they had seen before. On a rock sat a girl, a creature of such indescribable beauty that one might have taken her for a goddess.²¹

In the following description, the pirates predominantly focus on the corporeal aspect of Charicleia:²² they successively observe the young maiden’s head, her shoulders, arms, hands, fingers, and again her head, thereby apply­ing to their gazes a downward direction over her body, which in the end is lifted again.²³ Eventually, they follow Charicleia’s own gaze to the “manly beauty” (1.2.3: ἀνδρείῳ τῷ κάλλει) of the young man lying at her feet, who, despite his obvious pain, manages to direct his eyes towards the girl. When Charicleia stands up, the armed pirates are terrified and cover themselves, under the impression that they are witnessing the epiphany of a goddess, supposedly Artemis or Isis (cf. also 10.9.3).²⁴ Here the term ἀναπείθειν is remarkable, which, appearing as a participle ἀναπείθουσα in 1.2.1, refers to Charicleia and is syntactically juxtaposed to ἀµήχανόν τι κάλλος, i.e. her indescribable -or rather irresistible or inimitable²⁵- beauty. It is mainly beauty’s persuasive effect which makes the brigands believe that they are witnessing the epiphany of a goddess and which makes them associate beauty with divinity.²⁶ Here, for the first time in the novel, we grasp the persuasive power of κάλλος, which prompts the viewers to make certain assumptions (e.g. in identifying the protagonist with a peculiar divine power). Many other examples can be listed, where the protagonists’ κάλλος in Heliodorus affects other figures’ actions or intentions and where this beauty may even perform a key narrative function: whereas Charicleia captivates the Nile pirates by her ἀµήχανόν τι καὶ δαιµόνιον κάλλος (2.30.6; cf. 1.2.1; 3.3.4; 5.9.2), which emanates mainly from the brilliance of her flashing eyes (2.4.3), the sight of Theagenes’ persuades the people staring at him to think him an embodiment of masculine beauty (1.2.3: ἤνθει δὲ καὶ ἐν τούτοις ἀνδρείῳ τῷ κάλλει) and a true descendant of the great hero Achilles (4.5.5).²⁷ The human environment of both protagonists is, so to speak, thunderstruck by their excelling beauty and nobility (8.17.2: κάλλει δὲ καὶ εὐγενείᾳ διαπρέποντας): there seems to be nothing that anyone can do about it. The common people especially are overwhelmed by the protagonists’ κάλλος: the crowd which is allured by their beauty is unable (ἀµήχανοι, ἀδύνατοι) to control their inner emotions by any form of self-restraint (3.3.8: τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς πάθος ἐγκρατείᾳ κρύπτειν ἀδύνατοι; cf. 4.3.2-4). Both male and female sexes, Greeks and barbarians (e.g. 2.33.3),²⁸ are affected (3.3.8).²⁹ Only the two protagonists, through their outstanding κάλλος, experience πάθος and Eros’ tortures (4.10.5) equally, suffering τὸ ἴσον πάθος by the other one’s sight.³⁰

Regarding Heliodorus’ narration, the δύναµις of beauty to civilize ‘even’ barbarians’ hearts³¹ may advance the story or provoke an unexpected turn of events, more often to the better.³² And throughout the novel, beauty makes the readers speculate on the couple’s high birth. Admittedly, this may favour an interpretation that focuses on beauty’s participation in divine and numinous power,³³ since wonder (θαῦµα) is also a kind of reaction related to epiphanies from the gods. Nevertheless, I would like to concentrate rather on the persuasive effect of godlike κάλλος: obviously, it changes and affects the emotions of the beholders of καλά. These are filled with admiration, astonishment, and amazement, and some hearts are utterly enraptured with the beautiful protagonists.³⁴ Thus, the protagonists’ particular attractiveness radiates a highly gripping effect, which elicits in the beholders -as also in the internal recipients of κάλλος- strong psychological reactions. Among these are repeatedly θαῦµα (“wonder”),³⁵ ἔκπληξις (“confusion”),³⁶ and, more generally, πάθος (“affect”, “emotional suffering”).³⁷ Notably, all these terms point towards concepts which denote successful rhetorical illumination (ἐνάργεια) by means of a speech (λόγος), which appeals to all senses of its recipients.³⁸ Already the rhetorician Gorgias of Leontinoi (ca. 485-380 BCE), a leading representative of the first sophistic movement, writes about the πάθηµα διὰ τῶν λόγων (Hel., 58-59), the inner suffering provoked by words: in a similar fashion, through her extreme physical and godlike beauty, Helen had the power to arouse the desire of unnumerable men (Hel., 19-25, especially §19 on her ἰσόθεον κάλλος). Analogously again, Gorgias enables λόγος (speech, but also poetry) to create in the listeners particular forms of inner passion, such as anxious shiver, tearful compassion, and painful desire. Later in the fourth century BCE, Aristotle in his Rhetoric attributed to πάθος a central function in inducing persuasion (Rh., 1356a; 1377b-1378a), by which the audience of a speech is usually carried away with enthusiasm (Rh., 1408a-b);³⁹ for Aristotle, πάθος obtains a pivotal function as technical proof (ἔντεχνος πίστις), in line with argumentation (λόγος) and the speaker’s character (ἦθος). It affects the judgment of the addressees and prompts them to be filled with enthusiasm. And later still for Ps.-Longinus, excessive and enthusiastic πάθος (as a source of ὕψος, lit. “height”; but here “grandeur”)⁴⁰ is produced by solemn motives, amplification, the successful imitation of literary models, and the use of imagery (φαντασία).⁴¹

If we take a close look at the word κάλλος itself, we discover that in rhetorical theory it was also coined to denote a technical term and even a stylistic category. In the Imperial Age, when the Greek novels were composed, its use was described by model exercises in Greek prose composition and rhetoric, which were taught as a standard curriculum to anyone who was educated independent of their literary ambitions, and was thus ­available to any student of style. Hermogenes of Tarsus (ca. 160-230 CE) in his rhetorical textbook Περὶ ἰδεῶν, which as a standard work had a far-reaching effect from late antiquity onwards, regarded κάλλος as a keyword. In this sophisticated treatise on the systematic recording and evaluation of stylistic criteria, Hermogenes categorized certain stylistic forms (ἰδέαι). Each one is described and documented with literary material. Stylistic mastery, he says, arises through the perfect mixture of such ἰδέαι. The twelfth chapter (id. 1.12: Περὶ ἐπιµελείας καὶ κάλλους) deals widely with elegance (or care in composition) and beauty. Hermogenes considers beauty above all as a matter of harmony and apt proportion:

1.12.20-30. ἐπειδὴ γὰρ καθόλου τὸ κάλλος ἐστὶ συµµετρία µελῶν καὶ µερῶν µετ’ εὐχροίας, δι’ ὧν δὴ λόγος τις γίνεται, εἴτε ἰδεῶν ὅλων µιγνυµένων εἰς ταὐτὸν εἴτε καὶ τῶν συµπληρούντων ἑκάστην ἰδέαν - ταῦτα γὰρ οἷον µέλη καὶ µέρη ἐστὶν αὐτοῦ -, δεῖ δήπουθεν, εἰ µέλλοι καλὸς ἔσεσθαι, ἄν τε ποικίλος ἄν τε µονοειδὴς ᾖ, συµµετρίαν ἔχειν τούτων, ὅ ἐστιν εὐαρµοστίαν, καί τινα ἐπανθεῖν αὐτῷ οἷον εὔχροιαν, τὴν ἐµφαινοµένην διόλου µίαν τοῦ ἤθους ποιότητα, ἣν δὴ καὶ φύσει τινὲς χρῶµα λόγου ὀνοµάζουσι.⁴²

In general, beauty is a symmetry of limbs and parts, along with a good complexion, and it is through these that a speech [lógos] becomes [beautiful], whether entire types [of style] are combined into the same [speech] or they [sc. the elements] make up each type individually, for these are, as it were, their limbs and parts. It is necessary, then, if a speech is to be beautiful [kalós], whether it is variegated or uniform, that it have symmetry among these, that is, harmony, and that a kind of good complexion bloom upon it, which takes the form of a single quality of character throughout, and which some indeed naturally call the color of a speech.⁴³

Hermogenes thus follows Plato (Phaedrus, 264c) in constructing an ana­logy between a beautiful body and a discourse (λόγος), making a ­comparison between a well-organized, that is well-proportioned, speech and the human form. By attributing κάλλος to discourse or speech, Hermogenes underlines the power of λόγος on an audience, which is overwhelmed not by logical arguments but rather by stylistic, that is aesthetic, effects. At the same time, the term κάλλος (as a category of style) “does not entirely lose its connection with the visible and continues to bear, however lightly, overtones of attractiveness and perhaps a quasi-erotic, or at least sensual, appeal”.⁴⁴ Thus, Hermogenes’ stylistic criteria for κάλλος in a verbal text seem not only to suit ekphraseis representing beauty in the Aithiopika, but also the effective and vivid descriptions of the beauty of the characters. In Heliodorus, one can detect connections between ἐνάργεια (inlustratio, evidentia) and the kind of stylistic symmetry that Hermogenes sees as the basis of κάλλος in a text. Following the first vivid description of the protagonists’ beauty at the beginning of the novel, e.g., the narrator comments on the effect that such κάλλος excercises on its spectators, the Egyptian brigands: Hld., 1.4.3 Οὕτως εὐγενείας ἔµφασις καὶ κάλλους ὄψις καὶ λῃστρικὸν ἦθος οἶδεν ὑποτάττειν καὶ κρατεῖν καὶ τῶν αὐχµηροτέρων δύναται. Here, syntactic parallelism and chiasmus create a symmetry of style, rendering the beauty of the characters a figure for the novelist’s descriptional technique.

Secondly, in a rhetorical textbook composed in late antiquity, belonging most probably to a later date than the Aithiopika (whatever the precise chronological relationship between the two), we encounter a remarkable set description concerning the creation of κάλλος, which resembles its use in Heliodorus’ novel in many ways. This exciting text is transmitted among exercises in rhetorical and literary description (ἔκφρασις) within the work of the Greek sophist Libanius of Antioch (fourth c. CE).⁴⁵ Although Richard Foerster declared the Descr. 30 to be spurious and attributed it to an anonymous rhetorician (Ps.-Libanius),⁴⁶ this exercise on ἔκφρασις κάλλους is a valuable document, signifying the huge range of its author’s literary expertise. It can be read as an instruction on how to depict ‘beauty’ in a literary text.⁴⁷ At the centre of this ἔκφρασις κάλλους, Ps.-Libanius places a description of a beautiful girl leaning out of a window. His unnamed speaker elevates the ekphrasis to a form of true rhetorical art, which gives the impression of a model description to be embedded by writers such as Heliodorus in their novels. Compared to the theoretical treatise of Hermogenes, Ps.-Libanius’ graphic description is more suitable to practical use and much easier to be adopted in a concrete literary text:

Descr. 30.1-6: (1) Τήµερον εἶδον κόρην ἐκ θυρίδος προκύπτουσαν καὶ ἰδὼν ἑαλώκειν εὐθύς. ἔµπνουν γὰρ ἐδόκουν τὴν Σελήνην ὁρᾶν ἐπὶ γῆς ἢ µεταπεπλάσθαι τὴν Ἀφροδίτην εἰς ἄνθρωπον καὶ πείθειν εἶχον ἐµαυτὸν ὡς ἀΰλῳ κάλλει τὸ πρόσωπον ἰνδαλµάτισται. (2) Ἔρως γὰρ ἐκ τῶν ἐκείνης ὀµµάτων ἐτόξευε. καὶ προκατελάµβανε τὴν θέαν ἡ τόξευσις. καί πως ὀφθαλµοὶ µὲν τὸ κάλλος ἐθαύµαζον, ψυχὴ δὲ τῆς ὀδύνης ᾐσθάνετο καὶ βλέπειν ἐθέλων ἀπέθανον. καὶ τὸ µὲν κάλλος γλυκύ, ἡ δὲ τρῶσις πικρά. (3) καί πως γλυκύτερον ἦν τὸ λυπεῖν. τῶν γὰρ ὀφθαλµῶν λιχνευοµένων εἰς ὅρασιν τὸ κάλλος εἰς τὴν ψυχὴν διωλίσθαινε καὶ πῦρ ἐρωτικὸν τὸ πᾶν ἐλυµαίνετο. τίς γὰρ ἂν ἐκείνης τὸ κάλλος ὑπογράψαιτο; τίς παραδοίη γραφῇ; τίς διαµορφώσειε τοῖς χρώµασι; (4) καλὸς Ἀπελλῆς καὶ λόγος τούτου πολύς, ἀλλὰ µέχρι ταύτης καλός. καί πως ἐπιγραφέτω τῇ Τύχῃ καὶ χάριτας, ὅτι πρὸ ταύτης ἠρίστευσε καὶ τῆς ζωγραφικῆς ἐδείκνυ τὸ ἔντεχνον καὶ κάλλος οὐκ εἶχεν ὁρᾶν ὑπερνικῶν χειρὸς ἔντεχνον µίµηµα. ἀλλ’ ἔσχεν ἂν κἀκεῖνος τῆς συµφορᾶς παρηγόρηµα τὸ κάλλος ὁρᾶν ἐπὶ γῆς εὐτονοῦν καὶ τῶν ὀµµάτων τὴν δύναµιν καὶ ταὐτὸν ὑποµένειν τοῖς πειρωµένοις κάλλος ἡλίου παραδοῦναι τοῖς χρώµασι. (5) κάλλιστος οὖν ζωγράφος καλλίστης κόρης ἡ ἐµὴ ψυχή. ἀχρωµατίστως γὰρ τὸ κάλλος ὁρᾷ παρ’ ἑαυτῇ <καὶ> συµµεµόρφωται. καὶ νῦν ὁρᾶν τὴν εἰκόνα πεφάντασται. καὶ πολέµιον ὁ τεχνίτης ἔχει τὸ τέχνασµα. µεµψαίµην <ἂν> τοῖς ἐµοῖς ὀφθαλµοῖς, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀµόρφου κόρης ἠράσθησαν, ἀλλὰ τῇ ψυχῇ, ὅτι πέπονθεν, ἀλλ’ ἡδὺ τὸ πάθος καὶ τοῦ πάθους µᾶλλον ὁ θάνατος, ἵν’ ἔχῃ στεφανηφορεῖσθαι τῷ Ἔρωτι τοιούτου γενόµενος κάλλους ἀγώνισµα. (6) ἔγωγε οὖν ἐξ εὐπορίας ἠπόρηµαι καὶ λέγειν ἔχων πολλὰ ταῖς τῶν πολλῶν ὑπερβολαῖς ἀνακρούοµαι καὶ τὴν εὐπορίαν τοῦ λόγου ἀπορία σιγῆς διαδέχεται. οἶδε τὸ πάθος ψυχὴ κἀκείνη σοφιστεύει τὸν ἔρωτα καὶ δι’ ὧν ἐπεπόνθει δείξει τοῦ κάλλους τὴν δύναµιν.⁴⁸

(1) Today I saw a girl peeping out of a window, and upon seeing her I was immediately captivated; for I seemed to be seeing the Moon alive and breathing on earth, or Aphrodite changed into human form, and I was able to convince myself that her face appeared like immaterial beauty. (2) For Love shot his arrows at me from her eyes. And his shooting preoccupied my sight. And somehow my eyes marveled at her beauty, but my soul felt grief, and I died, wishing to look at it. And her beauty was sweet, but the wounding bitter. (3) And the pain was somehow sweeter; for as my eyes greedily desired to see, her beauty slipped into my soul, and the fire of love began to cause my complete ruin. For who could sketch out her beauty? Who could commit her to painting? Who could give her form with paint? (4) Apelles was a fine painter, and there is much discussion of him, but he was fine only up until her. And let him somehow also inscribe his thanks to Fortune, that he had his heyday before her and revealed the artistry of painting before her, and that he did not have to see beauty triumphing over an artistic imitation made by his hand. But even that man, as a consolation for his misfortune, would have had to see beauty being vigorous on earth and the power of her eyes, and to endure the same thing as those who try to commit the beauty of the sun to paint. (5) So, my soul is a most beautiful painter of a most beautiful girl; for it sees beauty by itself without color <and> has conformed to it. And now it has imagined that it sees an image. And the artist has his artwork as an enemy. I <would> blame my eyes, but they fell in love with a not unlovely girl; rather, I would blame my soul, because it suffered, but the suffering was sweet, and death more so than the suffering, so that it might be able to be worn as a victory wreath by Love, having become the feat of such beauty. (6) So, from my former abundance, I have been left lacking, and though I can say many things, I stop short of the exaggerations of the masses, and a silence brought on by lack takes over from my former abundance of speech. My soul knows suffering, and it gives expert performances on love, and it will reveal the power of beauty through what it has suffered.⁴⁹

In the first three subsections of Ps.-Libanius’ text (which altogether comprises 19 paragraphs), the male narrator describes how he once marveled at the outstanding natural beauty of an unknown girl. The reader familiar with the Aithiopika is immediately struck by several common elements between Ps.-Libanius’ set description of the κόρη and those elaborated by Heliodorus, particularly regarding the internal beholder’s perception of beauty in both texts. Like Heliodorus’ internal spectators, Ps.-Libanius’ narrator compares the girl to a divine and immaterial, even ideal, appearance (§1 to the goddess Aphrodite); he too describes how his eyes admire the κάλλος (§2 ἐθαύµαζον) and how he becomes entangled and even suffers a strong bodily reaction: an inner wounding by the sight (cf. §5 ἡδὺ τὸ πάθος), which has slipped into his, i.e. the beholder’s, soul. Even the god Love himself, who in comparison to Ps.-Libanius’ text plays only a minor role in Heliodorus, “was somehow astounded (ἐκπληττόµενον) by the sparklings of her beauty” (§10). The power of her eyes is also compared to shining sunbeams (§4). Although the girl’s sight left a strong impression on the speaker, “[his soul] knows suffering, and it gives expert performances on love, and it will reveal the power of beauty through what it has suffered.” (§6 οἶδε τὸ πάθος ψυχὴ κἀκείνη σοφιστεύει τὸν ἔρωτα καὶ δι’ ὧν ἐπεπόνθει δείξει τοῦ κάλλους τὴν δύναµιν). The somewhat obscure phrase⁵⁰ σοφιστεύειν τὸν ἔρωτα in Ps.-Libanius points to the fact that the narrator manages to hide his inner emotions: his soul will in turn give an artful description of its sufferings, thereby revealing τοῦ κάλλους τὴν δύναµιν, which undoubtedly refers to an elaborate rhetorical description, a sophisticated response to inner feelings of the sort Ps.-Libanius has composed. Nevertheless, the mention of the divine powers, Aphrodite and Love, metonymically denotes the erotic effect which the attractive sight has exercised on the speaker’s sensual perception. At the same time, the rhetorical questions at the end of the quoted passage (§3 “who could sketch out her beauty? […] Who could give her form with paint?”) reveal artistic imitation as the central task of the rhetorical ἔκφρασις κάλλους. Interestingly, this is in accordance with a practice observable in the novels, where the artistic or rhetorical imitation of κάλλος in words is problematized and similar topical (under)statements about the indescribability, inexpressibility, and inimitability of the protagonists’ outstanding beauty are used, which is -after all- described, expressed, and imitated in the same texts.⁵¹

The main concern of Ps.-Libanius’ text is, I would suggest, how κάλλος is to be mediated through a text which ‘transports’ the particular beauty of an internal figure. From here we can draw, in my view, a parallel to the novelist’s task to imitate perfectly and reproduce beauty through the representational medium itself, the description in the text.

Compare with Ps.-Libanius a passage from the beginning of Achilles Tatius’ novel Leucippe and Clitophon (1.4), where the internal narrator and protagonist of the story, Clitophon, describes how he once saw a beautiful young maiden (whose name is Leucippe, as we will later learn). First, he compares her delightful beauty to a painting of the goddess Selene sitting on a bull which he had seen before. After the description, he makes known his inner feelings:

1.4.4. Ὡς δὲ εἶδον, εὐθὺς ἀπωλώλειν· κάλλος γὰρ ὀξύτερον τιτρώσκει βέλους καὶ διὰ τῶν ὀφθαλµῶν εἰς τὴν ψυχὴν καταρρεῖ· ὀφθαλµὸς γὰρ ὁδὸς ἐρωτικῷ τραύµατι. (5) Πάντα δέ µε εἶχεν ὁµοῦ, ἔπαινος, ἔκπληξις, τρόµος, αἰδώς, ἀναίδεια. Ἐπῄνουν τὸ µέγεθος, ἐκπεπλήγµην τὸ κάλλος, ἔτρεµον τὴν καρδίαν, ἔβλεπον ἀναιδῶς, ᾐδούµην ἁλῶναι. Tοὺς δὲ ὀφθαλµοὺς ἀφέλκειν µὲν ἀπὸ τῆς κόρης ἐβιαζόµην· οἱ δὲ οὐκ ἤθελον, ἀλλ’ ἀνθεῖλκον ἑαυτοὺς ἐκεῖ τῷ τοῦ κάλλους ἑλκόµενοι πείσµατι, καὶ τέλος ἐνίκησαν.⁵²

As soon as I saw, I was done for: beauty pricks sharper than darts, and floods down through the eyes to the soul (for the eye is the channel of the wounds of desire).⁵³ All kinds of reactions possessed me at once: admiration, awe, terror, shame, shamelessness. I admired her stature, I was awestruck by her beauty, I was terrified in my heart, I gazed without shame, I felt ashamed at having been captivated so. I tried to force myself to tug my eyes away from the girl, but they resisted, tugging themselves back there again, as if towed by the lure of beauty. In the end, the eyes won.⁵⁴

As in Ps.-Libanius, the Achillean narrator suffers inner wounding from κάλλος (cf. e.g. ἔκπληξις), admitting at the same time that against such beauty he will not be able to keep his countenance perfectly; this is indicated by the use of ἀναίδεια, which anticipates a reaction to a beautiful sight which comprises immoral acts. In this, Achilles’ text evidently differs from the other descriptions of beauty mentioned above. Nevertheless, as the initial comparison with the painting of the goddess Selene suggests, we are also in this case dealing with a highly sophisticated elaboration of an ἔκφρασις κάλλους as it is modelled in an exemplary fashion in Ps.-Libanius’ description. In my view, the rhetorical description of outstanding beauty shows the novelists’ attempt to imitate or reproduce the effect of beauty within the representational medium of the text. This seems to be confirmed by the last sentence in the Achillean passage: the narrator tries to force his eyes away from the sight, “but they resisted, tugging themselves back there again, as if towed by the lure of beauty” (ἀλλ’ ἀνθεῖλκον ἑαυτοὺς ἐκεῖ τῷ τοῦ κάλλους ἑλκόµενοι πείσµατι). Here we deal with a remarkable polysemy, or better, bisemy (as the simplest type of ambiguity), of the word πεῖσµα, which denotes figuratively a “rope/ship’s cable” (LSJ s. v. 1), but, in an extended metaphorical sense, “persuasion” (LSJ s. v. 2, cf. πείθειν, πειθώ). Accordingly, the beholder’s eyes are both concretely and metaphorically pulled towards the beautiful sight.⁵⁵ To put this point in other words, beauty exerts a gripping power of persuasion which oscillates between an almost physical coercive force and a rhetorically effective authority (πεῖσµα in both senses respectively).⁵⁶ In the novel, πάθος is provoked by the sight of the protagonists’ ἀµήχανον κάλλος.

We may, in any case, assume from what has been said that by the time Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus produced their novels, which are firmly rooted in Greek literary culture, the term κάλλος, as shaped through rhetorical theory, would be well known to educated contemporaries, just as these novelists were. Although Ps.-Libanius’ model description of the creation of κάλλος is most probably to be dated later than Heliodorus’ novel, the similar conceptual devices of the ἔκφρασις κάλλους mirror the same cultural ‘sediment’ of rhetorical and literary training from the Imperial Age down to late antiquity. All these authors have to be looked at against a common cultural and educational background, which imbued them with various aspects of cultural knowledge, constituting altogether the concept of Greek παιδεία. From this perspective, the particular ‘rhetoricity’ which permeates these texts becomes more understandable.

These observations reveal a new aspect of the concept of beauty in the Aithiopika. On the one hand, we grasp κάλλος as a rhetoric device worked out in textbooks dealing with the art of rhetorical description (cf. Hermogenes, Ps.-Libanius), whilst on the other hand κάλλος is elaborated in descriptional passages within the novels themselves, marking out and narrativising the consequences of the protagonists’ overwhelming⁵⁷ and irresistible beauty (ἀµήχανον κάλλος).⁵⁸ There are many passages in which the description of beauty elicits strong admiration in its beholders, which in my view can be read as an implicit reflection on the whole novel’s aesthetic. At the beginning of Book 3 we read the general enthusiastic response of the internal recipient Cnemon to Calasiris’ account of the Delphic procession, in the course of which the two protagonists meet (3.1.1). This description by the internal narrator Calasiris fosters not only the internal recipients’, i.e. Cnemon’s, imagination, but also the imagination of the external recipients, who are invited to reproduce the scene as it really took place. There are, however, further descriptive passages, in which an internal audience serves as a model for the readers wondering at Heliodorus’ art of description. This is the case in 3.4.8, where the crowd gathered at Delphi admires the two young people’s beauty and loses their hearts to them, in the case of the men to Charicleia, and in the case of the women to Theagenes. Similarly, in 4.3.2-4 Theagenes’ beauty wins the sympathy of its beholders during the description of the foot-race at Delphi. Although one could enumerate more passages, in which the description of beauty in Heliodorus functions as a metaliterary pointer to the aesthetic and rhetorical power of the novel,⁵⁹ these few examples must suffice here.

David Konstan, in his monograph on the ancient Greek idea of beauty and its fortunes, comments that the term κάλλος could often be applied to things other than the human form. Its sense extended “from sexual attractiveness or desirability to the attractiveness of such things as art, poetry, certain physical features […] and abstract entitites such as the soul and its virtues”.⁶⁰ As a quality it could even be attributed to works of art described in literature (through ekphrasis).⁶¹ This wider application of the word κάλλος to various objects, which transcends the original signification of erotic attractiveness of a human form eliciting a strong desire in its beholders, is useful for its examination in, among others, the Heliodorean novel. Heliodorus’ terminology, which denotes not only the protagonists’ beauty but also the quality of rhetorical persuasion, offers to the hermeneutically active reader the opportunity to establish a general relation between the effect of the protagonists’ sight on the internal public and the aesthetic appeal of Heliodorus’ text itself.⁶² Emerging from his art of description, by which the novelist stages the protagonists and other figures in the text, the quality of beauty may therefore also be claimed for the textual medium, through which this effect is in turn displayed. The novel consequently advertises its own artful rhetoric in a self-referential way to the readers. The metadiegetic narrative of the Aithiopika conveys internal ‘reader reactions’, which correspond to the narrative polyphony found elsewhere in the text.⁶³ The internal recipients’ responses towards the beautiful sight of both protagonists, which I have listed above, can be interpreted as a kind of mise en abyme: in each case, the reactions of the viewers or recipients in the text illustrate the rhetorical power of the text.⁶⁴ Thus, the internal audiences in the novel receive the beauty of the protagonists (as e.g. it is described by Heliodorus) in a similar fashion to the readers who may wonder at the beautiful art of (e.g. stylistic) representation which is conveyed through the text itself, and who are thus invited to participate into the internal figures’ experience.⁶⁵ When we read the descriptive scenes Hld., 3.1.1, 3.4.8 and 4.3.2-4 in this way, the external readers are invited to an analogous response to the representation, i.e. the artful description of both protagonists, as the internal audience within the representation, be it the internal narratee Cnemon listening to Calasiris’ account, or the internal viewers of Charicleia’s and Theagenes’ beauty at the procession for Neoptolemus or at the Pythian Games. κάλλος thus bears a strongly self-referential significance,⁶⁶ which works as a central hermeneutical tool throughout the text. The internal viewers’ reactions, which are embedded in the text, in a meta-literary way mirror the encouraged reaction of readers to the novel itself. A close parallel is the eighth book of the Odyssey, where the Homeric audience is invited to compare their responses to the reactions elicited by Demodocus’ song (as recounted in the poem). Comparably, the reactions to κάλλος treated in this article prompt the Heliodorean readers to relate their impressions of the description to the impressions of the internal figures responding to the protagonists’ beauty.

This beauty appears to be not only an almost pictorial quality of objects mediated through ekphraseis,⁶⁷ but, more generally, through its sensual and bodily appeal, a means of presenting the whole story in a lifely and persuasive way. As readers we can perceive the spell of Charicleia’s and Theagenes’ beautiful appearances (the ἐκφράσεις κάλλους) in a manner comparable to the way we perceive other objects represented through a vivid style. This appeals to a wider fascination with self-reflexive descriptions, in which the external readers are invited to participate in the internal viewers’ experience of κάλλος. Τhese external recipients’ reactions may, again, resemble the reactions of the internal beholders of visual⁶⁸ beauty.⁶⁹ Heliodorus of Emesa applied the rhetorical concept of κάλλος as a poetical device to the Aithiopika. In it, beauty serves as an implicit stand-in keyword for the aesthetically attractive effect of the text on its reading audience.⁷⁰ Beauty in Heliodorus is therefore first and foremost, a textual quality pointing in a self-referential way to the rhetorical and literary attractiveness of the representational medium itself, the Aithiopika.