The Milesian tale (, ''Milesiaka''; Latin:''fabula milesiaca'', or ''Milesiae fabula'') is a genre of fictional story prominent in

ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

and

Roman literature Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings written in the Latin language. The beginning of formal Latin literature dates to 240 BC, when the first stage play in Latin was performed in Rome. Latin literatur ...

. According to most authorities, a Milesian tale is a

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...

fable Fable is a literary genre defined as a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a parti ...

, or folktale featuring love and adventure, usually of an

erotic Eroticism () is a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality, and romantic love. That quality may be found in any form of artwork, including painting, sculp ...

or titillating nature. This resulted in "a complicated narrative fabric: a travelogue carried by a main narrator with numerous subordinate tales carried by subordinate narrative voices". The best complete example of this would be

Apuleius Apuleius ( ), also called Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis (c. 124 – after 170), was a Numidians, Numidian Latin-language prose writer, Platonist philosopher and rhetorician. He was born in the Roman Empire, Roman Numidia (Roman province), province ...

's ''

The Golden Ass The ''Metamorphoses'' of Apuleius, which Augustine of Hippo referred to as ''The Golden Ass'' (Latin: ''Asinus aureus''), is the only ancient Roman novel in Latin to survive in its entirety. The protagonist of the novel is Lucius. At the end of ...

'', a Roman novel written in the second century of the

Common Era Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the ...

. Apuleius introduces his novel with the words "At ego tibi sermone isto Milesio varias fabulas conseram" ("But let me join together different stories in that Milesian style"), which suggests not each story is a Milesian tale, but rather the entire joined-together collection. The idea of the Milesian tale also served as a model for the episodic narratives strung together in

Petronius Gaius Petronius Arbiter"Gaius Petronius Arbiter"
Britannica.com. (; ; ; s ...

's ''

Satyricon The ''Satyricon'', ''Satyricon'' ''liber'' (''The Book of Satyrlike Adventures''), or ''Satyrica'', is a Latin work of fiction believed to have been written by Gaius Petronius in the late 1st century AD, though the manuscript tradition identifi ...

''.

Aristides's ''Milesian Tale''

The name ''Milesian tale'' originates from the ''Milesiaka'' of Aristides of Miletus (; fl. 2nd century BCE), who was a writer of shameless and amusing tales notable for their salacious content and unexpected plot twists. Aristides set his tales in

Miletus Miletus (Ancient Greek: Μίλητος, Mílētos) was an influential ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia, near the mouth of the Maeander River in present day Turkey. Renowned in antiquity for its wealth, maritime power, and ex ...

, which had a reputation for a luxurious, easy-going lifestyle, akin to that of

Sybaris Sybaris (; ) was an important ancient Greek city situated on the coast of the Gulf of Taranto in modern Calabria, Italy. The city was founded around 720 BC by Achaeans (tribe), Achaean and Troezenian settlers and the Achaeans also went on ...

Magna Graecia Magna Graecia refers to the Greek-speaking areas of southern Italy, encompassing the modern Regions of Italy, Italian regions of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania, and Sicily. These regions were Greek colonisation, extensively settled by G ...

; there is no reason to think that he was in any sense "of" Miletus himself. Later, in the first century BCE, the serious-minded historian Lucius Cornelius Sisenna translated Aristides into

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

under the title ''Milesiae fabulae'' (''Milesian Fables'') for an intellectual relaxation. Through this Latin translation of the work, the term "Milesian tale" gained currency in the ancient world. Milesian tales quickly gained a reputation for ribaldry:

Ovid Publius Ovidius Naso (; 20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace, with whom he i ...

, in ''Tristia'', contrasts the boldness of Aristides and others with his own ''

Ars Amatoria The (''The Art of Love'') is an instructional elegy series in three books by the ancient Roman poet Ovid. It was written in 2 AD. Content Book one of was written to show a man how to find a woman. In book two, Ovid shows how to keep her. These ...

'', for which he was punished by exile. In the dialogue on the kinds of love, '' Erotes'',

Lucian of Samosata Lucian of Samosata (Λουκιανὸς ὁ Σαμοσατεύς, 125 – after 180) was a Hellenized Syria (region), Syrian satire, satirist, rhetorician and pamphleteer who is best known for his characteristic tongue-in-cheek style, with whi ...

—if in fact he was the author—praised Aristides in passing, saying that after a day of listening to erotic stories he felt like Aristides, "that enchanting spinner of bawdy yarns". This suggests that the lost ''Milesiaka'' had for its framing device Aristides himself, retelling what he had been hearing of the goings-on at Miletus.

Plutarch Plutarch (; , ''Ploútarchos'', ; – 120s) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo (Delphi), Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ''Parallel Lives'', ...

, in his '' Life of Crassus'', notes that after the

Battle of Carrhae The Battle of Carrhae () was fought in 53 BC between the Roman Republic and the Parthian Empire near the ancient town of Carrhae (present-day Harran, Turkey). An invading force of seven Roman legion, legions of Roman heavy infantry under Marcus ...

in 53 BCE, the victorious Parthians found collections of Milesian tales in the baggage of the Roman prisoners.

Legacy

Though the idea of the Milesian tale served as a model for the episodic narratives strung together in ''The

'' by Gaius Petronius Arbiter and ''

'' by Lucius Apuleius (second century CE), neither Aristides's original

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

text nor the Latin translation survived. The lengthiest survivor from this literature is the tale of "

Cupid and Psyche Cupid and Psyche is a story originally from ''Metamorphoses'' (also called ''The Golden Ass''), written in the 2nd century AD by Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis (or Platonicus). The tale concerns the overcoming of obstacles to the love between Psy ...

", found in Apuleius, which Sir Richard Burton observed, "makes us deeply regret the disappearance of the others". Aristidean saucy and disreputable heroes and spicy, fast-paced anecdote resurfaced in the medieval '' fabliaux''.

Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer ( ; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He ...

's "

The Miller's Tale "The Miller's Tale" () is the second of Geoffrey Chaucer's ''Canterbury Tales'' (1380s–1390s), told by the drunken miller Robin toquite (a Middle English term meaning requite or pay back, in both good and negative ways) "The Knight's Tale". ...

" is in Aristides' tradition. M. C. Howatson, in ''The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature'' (1989), voiced the traditional view the Milesian tale is the source "of such medieval collections of tales as the '' Gesta Romanorum'', the ''

Decameron ''The Decameron'' (; or ''Decamerone'' ), subtitled ''Prince Galehaut'' (Old ) and sometimes nicknamed ''l'Umana commedia'' ("the Human comedy", as it was Boccaccio that dubbed Dante Alighieri's ''Comedy'' "''Divine''"), is a collection of ...

'' of

Boccaccio Giovanni Boccaccio ( , ; ; 16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so well known as a writer that he was s ...

, and the ''

Heptaméron The ''Heptaméron'' is a collection of 72 short stories written in French by Marguerite de Navarre (1492–1549), published posthumously in 1558. It has the form of a frame narrative and was inspired by ''The Decameron'' of Giovanni Boccacc ...

'' of Marguerite of Navarre". Gottskálk Jensson of the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen (, KU) is a public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia, after Uppsala University. ...

Denmark Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...

, however, offered a dissenting view or corrective, arguing the original Milesian tale was: "a type of first-person novel, a travelogue told from memory by a

narrator Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the ...

who every now and then would relate how he encountered other characters who told him stories which he would then incorporate into the main tale through the

rhetoric Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse ( trivium) along with grammar and logic/ dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or w ...

al technique of narrative impersonation". In 2010, Nicholas Chong published retold Milesian tales in his book "The Milesian and Malesian Tales", in which he mentions an Arcadian human sacrifice.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Milesian Tale Ancient Greek novels Fabulists Erotic literature Tale Ancient Greek erotic literature ca:Arístides de Milet de:Aristeides von Milet fr:Aristide de Milet it:Aristide di Mileto