Abstract

A change in the form of narrative presentation divides Heliodorus’ Aethiopica in two halves, the first embracing Books 1–5, the second Books 6–10. The shift has been described in different terms: Keyes notes that, whereas the first part uses an in medias res opening, the second follows by and large chronological order. Morgan ascribes to the first half a ‘hermeneutic impulse’ that gives way to an ‘end-directed’ drive in the second half. Using Sternberg's concept of narrative time, one could say that by and large the first five books are dominated by curiosity, the second five books by suspense: after trying to fathom the prehistory, the reader then directs her attention to the further development of the plot. The shift, however, concerns not only the orchestration of time, but also the stance of the narrator: while Hefti juxtaposes the net of embedded narratives in the first five books with the predominance of the primary narrator in the last five books, Futre Pinheiro considers the shift in terms of ‘showing’ and ‘telling’. The difference between the two halves of the Aethiopica thus hinges on the central narratological categories of time and voice.