Several persons named Heliodorus are known to us from ancient times, the best known of which is Heliodorus of Emesa, author of the novel Aethiopica.

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Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple, Gérard de Lairesse

Heliodorus was a minister of Seleucus IV Philopator ca. 175 BC, and is said to have assassinated Seleucus. 2 Maccabees reports that he entered the Temple in Jerusalem in order to take its treasure, but was turned back by three forms of God.

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Possibly the same Heliodorus as the previous one (living in the same time period and having the same rank) erected famous votive Heliodorus pillar near Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh, India with an inscription:

"This Garuda-column of Vasudeva (Visnu), the god of gods, was erected here by Heliodorus, a worshiper of Visnu, the son of Dion, and an inhabitant of Taxila, who came as Greek ambassador from the Great King Antialkidas (Antialcidas) to King Kasiputra Bhagabhadra, the savior, then reigning prosperously in the fourteenth year of his kingship."

(Transliteration and translation of this ancient Brahmi inscription was published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (London: JRAS, Pub., 1909, pp. 1053-54.)

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Heliodorus of Athens wrote fifteen books on the Acropolis of Athens, possibly about 150 BC.

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Another Heliodorus was a metrist in the 1st century AD who did work on the comedies of Aristophanes. He was the principal authority used by Juba of Mauretania.

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At about the same time there was a surgeon named Heliodorus, probably from Egypt, and mentioned by Juvenal. This Heliodorus wrote several books on medical technique which have survived in fragments and in the works of Orobasius.

Editions

A Coraes (1804)

GA Hirschig (1856)

References

• M Oeftering, Heliodorus und seine Bedeutung für die Literatur, with full bibliographies (1901)
  
• JC Dunlop, History of Prose Fiction (1888)
  
• E Robde, Der grechische Roman (1900)