Aristides of Miletus

The Milesian tale (Μιλησιακά, Milisiaka in Greek; in Latin fabula milesiaca, or Milesiae fabula) is a genre of fictional story prominent in ancient Greek and Roman literature. According to most authorities, a Milesian tale is a short story, fable, or folktale featuring love and adventure, usually of an erotic or titillating nature. M. C. Howatson, in The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature (1989), voices the traditional view that the Milesian tale is the source "of such medieval collections of tales as the Gesta Romanorum, the Decameron of Boccaccio, and the Heptameron of Marguerite of Navarre."

Gottskálk Jensson of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, however, offers a dissenting view or corrective, arguing that the original Milesian tale was

This resulted in "a complicated narrative fabric: a travelogue carried by a main narrator with numerous subordinate tales carried by subordinate narrative voices." The best complete example of this would be Apuleius's The Golden Ass, a Roman novel written in the second century of the Common Era. Apuleius introduces his novel with the words "At ego tibi sermone isto Milesio varias fabulas conseram" ("But let me join together different stories in that Milesian style") [2], which suggests that it is not each story that is a Milesian tale but rather the entire joined-together collection. The idea of the Milesian tale also served as a model for the episodic narratives strung together in Petronius's Satyricon.

The name Milesian tale originates from the Milisiaka of Aristides of Miletus (Greek: Ἀριστείδης ὁ Μιλήσιος; fl. 2nd century BCE), who was a writer of shameless and amusing tales notable for their salacious content and unexpected plot twists. Aristides set his tales in Miletus, which had a reputation for a luxurious, easy-going lifestyle, akin to that of Sybaris in Magna Graecia; there is no reason to think that he was in any sense "of" Miletus himself.

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