Greek novel and Roman rule: the eudaimonia in the Ephesian Tale of Anthia and Habrocomes

This paper intends to study the myth of “happiness” in the Ephesian Tale of Anthia and Habrocomes by Xenophon of Ephesus. Analysing the passages of the work in which we find the two roots εὐδαιμον– and μακαρ–, we’ll show how the “happiness” in the novel is aimed at an audience of ideal and real readers and written by an author who lived in a supranational and multilingual State such as the Roman Empire. Be happy, wealth and blessed are connected with four semantic fields: the fulfilment of the soul, the possession of material goods, the “peace of mind” reached in the netherworld, and some geographic locations of the Roman Empire considered favourite because hometown of the main characters (Ephesus, Perinthus) or provinciae economically rich (Sicily) or even regions inhabited by people “happy” (Pontus) to speak their mother tongue (Cappadocia).