Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon (composed in the second century AD) is the most bizarre and risque of the four 'Greek novels' of idealized love between boy and girl that survive from the period of the Roman empire. Stretching the capacity of the genre to the limits, Achilles Tatius' narrative covers adultery, violence, evisceration, pederasty, virginity-testing, and, of course, an improbable happy ending. Ingenious and sophisticated in conception, Leucippe and Clitophon is, in execution, at once subtle, stylish, moving, brash, tasteless, and obscene.