How do Babylonians boil eggs?

• Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments edited by Susan Stephens and John Winkler
  Princeton, 541 pp, £48.00, September 1995, ISBN 0 691 06941 7

The Greeks themselves had no word for their last and most lasting literary invention. ‘Extended prose fiction’ would describe it; ‘novel’ or ‘romance’ would characterise it. Modern critics used to opt for ‘romance’, with its implication of purple sentiment out in the Mills-and-Boondocks of literature. Nowadays, we hear more about the Greek Novel, with all that implies for a place in the Great Tradition.