Which book is the world’s earliest novel? That question will probably never be definitively answered, but Callirhoe m…Which book is the world’s earliest novel? That question will probably never be definitively answered, but Callirhoe may have the best claim of any text out there. Callirhoe is one of seven novels surviving more or less intact from western antiquity: two Roman ones (The Golden Ass and the Satyricon) and five in Greek*. There are other texts hovering around the margins that could be added to this list, most of them very fragmentary, but the seven listed here are the big ones. The brilliant Satyricon is quite probably the oldest, dating from 65 AD or so, but that peculiar combination of prose, poetry, and mayhem won’t strike many modern readers as a true "novel". Callirhoe, on the other hand, is a novel as we understand the form today: it’s a fiction story in prose with a clear beginning, middle and end. The dates of all the early novels are very fuzzy, but Callirhoe was probably composed around the beginning of the second century AD, which could well make it the oldest of the seven (Satyricon excepted). Not only is it possibly the world’s oldest novel, but it might be the oldest example of historical fiction. The story is set around 400 BC and features real historical figures from that era, including Hermocrates of Syracuse and Artaxerxes II of Persia. The book is a romance between two young Greek lovers who are separated shortly after marriage, and describes their wild adventures as they fight to reunite with each other.”Callirhoe” by Raymond Auguste Quinsac Monvoisin (1823)The plot is entertaining and filled with action. In a relatively short amount of space, Callirhoe crams in kidnapping, slave trading, a character being buried alive, an attempted crucifixion, a trial, and battles on land and sea. In addition to the leading lights of Sicily, the kings of Persia and Egypt wander onto the …