The Theme of Shipwreck on (In)hospitable Shores in Ancient Prose Narratives

John Hilton,

doi:10.1515/tc-2012-0013

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The Theme of Shipwreck on (In)hospitable Shores in Ancient Prose Narratives

Published/Copyright: October 26, 2012

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From the journal Trends in Classics Volume 4 Issue 2

Abstract: This article begins with a discussion of the theme of shipwreck in Homer’s Odyssey and Euripides’ Iphigeneia among the Taurians and its uptake in ancient rhetorical exercises and in ancient prose narratives. It then proceeds to investigate how two aspects of this theme – the presence or absence of divine agency in these episodes and the contrast between civilization and savagery (especially as manifested in acts of human sacrifice) – are used in contrasting ways in the New Testament (especially Acts) and the apocryphal gospels, the Satyrica of Petronius, Leucippe and Clitophon by Achilles Tatius, and Heliodorus’ Aethiopica. The main purpose of the argument is not to demonstrate that these texts are necessarily interrelated so much as that they reveal divergent attitudes towards the possibility of superhuman salvation from life-threatening situations. It is in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica, despite its celebration of blood sacrifices, that the abolition of human sacrifice is most clearly articulated.

: Ancient fiction; shipwreck; human and divine agency; hospitality; human sacrifice; The Acts of the Apostles; apocryphal gospels

Published Online: 2012-10-26

Published in Print: 2012-10

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https://doi.org/10.1515/tc-2012-0013