summary:

Despite the long debate over whether it was composed in the third or fourth century c.e., Heliodorus's Aithiopika has usually been understood through the imperial literary contexts which characterize earlier novels. This article inverts this perspective to explore instead how the novel fits into contemporary late antique considerations about fiction. By reading the Aithiopika against late-fourth and early-fifth century discussions of falsehood and plausibility found in Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa, this article argues that the Aithiopika not only reworks classical models for reading fiction, but also illuminates late antique concerns about fiction, falsehood, and belief.

概括：

尽管人们对其争论到底是在公元三世纪还是四世纪构成的问题进行了长期的争论，但赫利奥杜鲁斯的《埃塞俄比亚皮卡》通常是通过代表早期小说的帝国文学语境来理解的。本文将这种观点转变为探索小说如何适应当代关于小说的古董考虑。通过针对四世纪末和五世纪初在尼萨的奥古斯丁和格里高利中发现的关于虚假性和合理性的讨论来阅读《埃塞俄比亚人妖》，这篇文章认为，《埃塞俄比亚人妖》不仅重制了经典的小说阅读模式，而且阐明了后期关于小说的古董关注，虚假和信仰。