The libretto, by Duché de Vancy, is based on the Ancient Greek novel Ethiopica by Heliodorus.
The Countesse of Pembrokes Yvychurch, Part 1 adapted from Torquato Tasso's Aminta; Part 2 a revision of Fraunce's translation of Amyntas 1587 by Thomas Watson; volume also includes translations of the second Bucolic of Virgil (first published in Fraunce's The Lawiers Logike) and of the opening of Heliodorus's Aethiopica (see also The Third Part 1592)
William Lisle, The Faire Aethiopian, published anonymously; verse translation of Heliodorus, Aethiopica)
Imitating the literature of the Alexandrian period, they wrote romances, panegyrics, epigrams, satires, and didactic and hortatory poetry, following the models of Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius, Asclepiades and Posidippus, Lucian and Longus.
A legend, composed around the 10th century and incorporating elements from other saints’ hagiographies, states that Liberalis of Treviso was educated in the Christian faith by Heliodorus.