ACHILLES TATIUS  , of Alexandria, Greek rhetorician, author of the erotic romance, the Adventures of Leucippe and Cleitophon, flourished about A.D . 450, perhaps later . Suidas, who alone calls him Statius, says that he became a Christian and eventually a bishop—like Heliodorus, whom he imitated—but there is no evidence of this . Photius, while severely criticizing his lapses into indecency, highly praises the conciseness and clearness of his style, which, however, is artificial and laboured . Many of the incidents of the romance are highly improbable, and the characters, except the heroine, fail to enlist sympathy . The descriptive passages and digressions, although tedious and introduced without adequate reasons, are the best part of the work . The large number of existing MSS. attests its popularity . (Ediiio princeps, 16os; first important critical edition by Jacobs, 1821; later editions by Hirschig, 1856; Hercher, 1858 . There are translations in many languages; in English by Anthony H[odges], 1638, and R . Smith, 1855 . See also ROMANCE.) Suidas also ascribes to this author an Etymology, a Miscellaneous History of Famous Men, and a treatise On the Sphere . Part of the last is extant under the title of An Introduction to the Phaenomena of Aratus .

But if the writer is the prudentissimus

Achilles referred to by Firmicus Maternus (about 336) in his Matkeseos libri, iv. so, 17 (ed . Kroll), he must have lived long before the author of Leucippe . The fragment was first published in 1567, then in the Uranologion of Petavius, with a Latin translation, 163o . Nothing definite is known as to the author-ship of the other works, which are lost .