Achilles Tatius - Life and Minor Works

Life and Minor Works

Very little is known of the author; and the little information provided by the sources, represented by Photius and the Suda (which refers to him as Achilles Statius), is often misleading. Modern scholars believe, on the ground of papyrus finds, that he must have lived in or before the late 2nd century. It is generally assumed that he lived and wrote earlier than the Greek novelist Longus. The manuscript tradition assigns him to Alexandria, perhaps correctly but perhaps simply on the basis of the detailed description of the city found in the novel. The claim in the Suda that he converted to Christianity and became a bishop is often argued to be fictional.

The Suda also ascribes to the author a work on the sphere (in Greek περὶ σφαίρας), a fragment of which, professing to be an introduction to the Phaenomena of Aratus, may still be extant (in Greek Eἰσαγωγὴ εἰς τὰ Ἀράτoυ φαινόμενα). This, however, may be the work of another Achilles Tatius, who lived in the 3rd century. This work is referred to by Firmicus Maternus, who about 336 speaks of the prudentissimus Achilles in his Matheseos libri (Math. iv. 10). The fragment was first published in 1567, then in the Uranologion of the Jesuit scholar Dionysius Petavius, with a Latin translation in 1630. The same source also mentions a work of Achilles Tatius on etymology, and another entitled Miscellaneous Histories.