ABSTRACT
Even a cursory reading of Thucydides' fifth-century BCE History of the Peloponnesian War reveals how it differs strikingly from the four New Testament Gospels. One conspicuous difference is Thucydides' practice of seeing at least two sides of complex issues. In the case of a devastating plague taking many lives, Thucydides notes, the people concluded that worshiping the gods made no difference, “seeing they all perished alike“. In discussing the role of power in human history, Thucydides seems to allow that the gods play a role in human affairs. Thucydides' contemporary, the philosopher Democritus, invented the theory of atoms. Roughly four and a half centuries later, Chariton, a Greek-speaking citizen of Aphrodisia, developed a way of telling stories, not in epic poetry, but in narrative fiction prose. Like the Book of Acts, Chariton's novel is adventurous, highly entertaining, imaginative, creative, and ever alert to dramatic possibilities.
