Lucian’s Amores and the Greek novels

Lucian’s Amores is one of the risqué works of antiquity. At times bordering on the obscene, it contains the notorious anecdote of agalmatophilia involving the Cnidian Aphrodite, and what constitutes most of it, with constant nods to the standard works on the subject, is the long answer to the question of whether it is better to love girls or boys. But it is also the story of a journey that takes the protagonist Lycinus through places, situations, and encounters with art, which readers of Greek novels in particular would have found familiar. This paper aims to show that a substantial part of the Amores is in fact a web of allusions to the novels, obtained through either the compression or the extension of cornerstone elements from the works of Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus, and Achilles Tatius