Chariton

Chariton, the novel’s otherwise unknown author, describes himself as clerk to the rhetor Athenagoras in Aphrodisias, just up the Lycus valley in Asia Minor, not far from Colossae (Chaer. 1.1.1). His work is widely accepted as the first complete extant example of Greek romance, a genre that was to continue to flourish, with increasing sophistication and complexity, right through late antiquity until it (apparently) lost out to its nearest market rival with the growth of the Christian martyr-acts and apocryphal tales.

Loveday Alexander, “The Virgin and the Goddess: Women and Religion in Greek Romance,” in Women and Gender in Ancient Religions: Interdisciplinary Approaches, ed. Stephen P. Ahearne-Kroll, Paul A. Holloway, and James A. Kelhoffer, WUNT 263 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 12–13.