HELIODORUS, son of Theodosius, was born at Emesa in Syria, in the second half of the 4th century. He belonged to a family of priests of the Syrian sun-god Elaga-bιlus, but he was himself a Christian, and became bishop of Tricca in Thessaly. He is famous as the author of the best of the Greek love-romances. It is called Aethiopica, as it relatee the history of Chariclea, daughter of Hydaspes, king of /Ethiopia, her love for Theagenes, a Thessalian of high rank, and the happy issue after a series of exciting adventures and hairbreadth escapes. The Alexandrian pastoral poets often introduced brief love episodes to give animation to their scenes of pastoral life. When rhetorical prose became the fashionable style of composition, the mere episode was expanded into a complete history of the lovers from their birth to their happy union. Antonius Diogenes, according to Photius, waβ the first to write a book of the kind; and Jamblichus, about 100 a.d., also wrote a love romance. But the Aethiopica is the oldest work of the kind that has come down to us. It is full of the most improbable scenes and incidents; the hero is a weak and dull character, but the heroine is well drawn and full of interest. The description of customs and manners, especially of religious ceremonies, is minute, and often most interesting in an antiquarian point of view. The work not only became a model for the later Greek romance writers, but has been much imitated by the French and Italian writers of romance. Tasso praises the artful development of the plot; and the early life of Clorinda (Jerusalem Delivered', c. xii.) is almost identical with that of Chariclea. Racine meditated a drama on the subject of the romance, and Raphael has made scenes from it the subject of two of his pictures. The best ...