Laura Miguélez-Cavero

The diversity of the extant novels and their different provenance and dating make it difficult and irresponsible to reach a simple conclusion about the readership of all of them. This paper explores the encounter of an anonymous narrator and Clitophon with which Achilles Tatius opens up his Leucippe and Clitophon, a (fictional) internal audience, focusing on the three roles played by the narrator (storyteller, inducer of the main narrative and listener to Clitophon’s long account) and compares them with what we know about the readership of the genre. The first narrator presents himself as a limited pepaideumenos, similar to an average reader, more interested in enjoying a good fictional narrative than in analysing it philosophically, though there are enough learned cues in his intervention to satisfy a reader who is looking for an intellectual past-time.