I omit a résumé of the work of Huet,[4] Dunlop,[5] Chassang[6] and of Chauvin,[7] all significant in their times, to present a theory which is now more striking. In 1921 Bruno Lavagnini in a learned monograph, _Le Origini del Romanzo Greco_, traced the development of the Greek romance from local legends of Magna Graecia, Greece proper, the Greek Islands and Asia Minor. He found support for his theory in the titles of many of them: Ἐφεσιακά by Xenophon of Ephesus, Βαβυλωνιακά by Xenophon of Antioch, Αἰθιοπικά by Heliodorus, Κυπριακά by Xenophon of Cyprus, Ῥοδιακά, Κωακά, Θασιακά by a Philippus of Amphipolis, which Suidas mentioned. In his study he took into account the novelle or short stories which Rohde believed had no influence on the novel, and studied the Μιλησιακά, the short _Love Romances_ of Parthenius, the fragment of the _Aitia_ of Callimachus, _Acontius and Cydippe_. He showed that Rohde had entirely neglected the important influence of the novella in the Greek romance and had been mistaken in his insistence on the fundamentally different character of the two. Rohde claimed that the novella was realistic, the romance idealistic and hence declared that any derivation of the romance from the novella was impossible. Lavagnini recognized other influences in the development of the romance, especially those of satire and of the new comedy, but he maintained that an essential feature was the historical. He admitted that in the use of his local legends the events are projected into an ideal and remote past. The tendency in the new criticism of the Greek Romances, notably in the work of Aristide Calderini,[8] is not to seek for any one main source for their “origins,” but rather to consider all possible precursors in the field of fiction who directly or indirectly influenced them. Their name is legion and they appear in the fields of both poetry and prose. For from the earliest times of Greek literature the art of narration was in use. Epics presented narratives of war in the Iliad, of adventure in the Odyssey, of love in Apollonius Rhodius. Drama produced narrative speeches particularly in tragedy in the role of the messenger. Elegiac poetry developed subjective-erotic stories, based on myths, or history, or real life, and written in lyric mood in narratives or letters. Idyls finally portrayed against a pastoral setting the outdoor loves of shepherds.