Heliodorus's Aethiopica and the Odyssean Mnesterophonia: an intermedial reading

The opening scene of Heliodorus’s Aethiopica has a special ekphrastic quality, and scholars have noted that its tragic banquet recalls the Mnesterophonia in Homer’s Odyssey. I argue that Heliodorus’s banquet is not only a literary remaking of the Odyssean episode but also an account that stresses its pictorial quality. This new reading is suggested by the vividness of the description and by the echoes of drinking vessels and tables, the two distinctive features of the iconography of the Mnesterophonia, which was likely to be known in Heliodorus’s time (third-fourth centuries c.e.)