The interest of the story, as in the _Ethiopics_, turns chiefly on an elopement, and the consequent misadventures of the hero and heroine among various sets of robbers and treacherous friends; but the lovers, after being thus duly punished for their undutiful escapade, are restored, at the finale, to their original position, and settle quietly in their native home, under their own vines and fig-trees. Of the author himself little appears to be certainly known. Fabricius and other writers have placed him in the "third or fourth" century of our era; but this date will by no means agree with his constant imitations of Heliodorus, who is known to have lived at the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth century; and Tatius, if not his contemporary, probably lived not long after him. Suidas (who calls him _Statius_) informs us that he was a native of Alexandria; and attributes to his pen several other works on various subjects besides the romance now in question, a fragment only of which--a treatise on the sphere--has been preserved. He adds, that he was a pagan when he wrote "Clitophon and Leucippe," but late in life embraced Christianity, and even became a bishop. This latter statement, however, is unsupported by any other authority, and would seem to be opposed by the negative testimony of the patriarch Photius, who (in his famous _Bibliotheca_, 118, 130) passes a severe censure on the immorality of certain passages in the works of Tatius, and would scarcely have omitted to inveigh against the further scandal of their having proceeded from the pen of an ecclesiastic. "In style and composition this work is of high excellence; the periods are generally well rounded and perspicuous, and gratify the ear by their harmony ... but, except in the names of the personages, and the unpardonable breaches of decorum of which he is guilty, the author appears to have closely copied Heliodorus both in the plan and execution of his narrative." In another passage, when treating of the _Babylonica_[1] of Iamblichus, he repeats this condemnation:--"Of these three principal writers of amorous tales. Heliodorus has treated the subject with due gravity and decorum. Iamblichus is not so unexceptionable on these points; and Achilles Tatius is still worse, in his eight books of _Clitophon and Leucippe_, the very diction of which is soft and effeminate, as if intended to relax the vigour of the reader's mind." This last denunciation of the patriarch, however, is somewhat too sweeping and indiscriminate, since, though some passages are certainly indefensible, they appear rather as interpolations, and are in no manner connected with the main thread of the story, the general tendency of which is throughout innocent and moral; and whatever may be said of these blemishes, it must be allowed that the pages of Achilles Tatius are purity itself when compared with the depravity of Longus, and some of his followers and imitators among the Greek romancists.