Antonius Diogenes

Antonius Diogenes (Greek: Ἀντώνιος Διογένης) was the author of an ancient Greek romance entitled The Wonders Beyond Thule (Τὰ ὑπὲρ Θoύλην ἄπιστα Apista huper Thoulen). Scholars have placed him in the 2nd century CE, but his age was unknown even to Photios, who wrote a synopsis of the romance. The romance was a novel of twenty-four books and was written in the form of a dialogue about travels. It is highly praised by Photios for its vivid narration, its clearness, and the gracefulness of its descriptions.

Scholars have tended to take it as a given that Lucian of Samosata had Diogenes' work principally in mind when he wrote his celebrated parody, the Verae Historiae (True Histories), but J.R. Morgan has more recently questioned this accepted notion upon extensive comparative study of the two works.

The current knowledge of the novel's content is from Photios, who left a brief summary in his lengthy volume of what-is-worth-to-read, Myriobiblos, which he made for his idle brother, Tarasios, to allow him to choose which books to read. Two sections in Porphyry also partially survive, where the novel is used as a historical source for his Life of Pythagoras, but neither section is very helpful about the plot. The few surviving papyrus fragments of the novel, however, do reveal some aspects of the structure and content.

Even though Photios praises the work in high tones, both for its style clarity and its plot credibility, the summary of the content that he presents creates a confusing impression, mainly because of the multiple nested levels of narration.

The novel begins in an outermost layer where the author writes about a certain Roman fellow, Faustinus, reporting on his travels in search of books. He's even off to Tyros, looking for marvels for his sister Isidora, who basically loves reading books. A corresponding letter of the author follows a dedication to his own sister, also named Isidora.

The novel's first frame, however, is actually a letter, obviously discovered by Faustinus. It was written by a Greek, Balagros, who had been a member of the Somatophylax Guard, historically attested in the service of Alexander the Great. Balagros sends the letter to his wife Phila—another historic person—who is the eldest daughter of Antipater. Balagros reports that after the conquest of Tyros, a soldier approached Alexander and notified him of a rather strange discovery. In response, escorted by his generals Hephaistion and Parmenion, Alexander stepped into a hypogeium, which contained several stone sarcophagi. These were adorned with peculiar inscriptions:

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