Xenophon’s ‘Round Trip’: Geography as Narrative Consistency in the Ephesiaka

A careful examination of Xenophon’s geography reveals a circular pattern and a neat if rudimentary technique of entrelacement. Such an arrangement (i.e. the characters' 'round trip') squares well with Xenophon's orali(istic) style and accounts for its open-ended structure: far from being a shortcoming, this feature is best interpreted in the light of ancient oral poetics, and helps understand a number of alleged problems of this novel, such as the difference in style between the first (extra-circular, in fact) scene and the frantic adventures forming the core of the story. The circular pattern, thus, reinforces the case against the epitome theory in books 2-5.