Many elements suggest the latter. All of the chracters,wheather they are natives of Phonecians,Byzantium,Egypt,or Ephesus,speak in Greek,have Greek names,and demonstrate Greek paideis or culture.

The exceptions are the boukoli, the bandits who ambush Leucippe and Clitophon. They are described as ''terrifying savages.

All were huge,black-skinned[not the pure black of the Indians, more as you would imagine a half-caste Ethiopian],bareheaded,light of foot but broad of body.

They were all speaking a barbarian language'[3-9].

Bandits were a real threat in the Roman Empire. Taitus describes how in Nero's reign the Cilician tribal cheif Troxoboris fortified a mountain position, from which base his his men laucned an attach upon the city,cultivators,townspeople, and traders all suffered[Annals 12.55].

But to read Achille's description as a reflection of reality is grossly to underplay his rhetoric of demonization. The boukoloi are caricatures , like other ethnocentric streotypes of Egyptians elsewhere in the novel[eg at 4.4:''Thus it is with an Egypt: in times of fear cowardice leads him to servility''] Geographic and ethnographic description reinforce this construction of the alterity of Egypt.

The description of the Egyptian clod of earth emphasizes its different and strangeness[3.13, and cf. the description of the Nile's duplicity at 4.12].

Despite Achillies' being a native of Alexandria, he perpetuates the ethnocentric streotypes of Egypt familar from many centuries' construction of Greek self-definition against the 'Barbarian'.

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Herdsmen: the celebrated boukoli of the coastl areas of the Nile. They are stock baddies of the novels[Xenophon of Epesus. 3.12.2, 'Shepards'; Helidorus 1.5 1-2,etc]

[9] So , we spent two days here recovering from our trials before hirting an Egyptian ship[with some of the little money that we happened to have stowed in our belts] and making the voyage up the Nile towards Alexandria.

We had decided spme time there in the hopethat our friends might have travelled there, and that we might perhaps find them.

When,however, we reached a certain town we suddenly heard a great cry. 'Herdsmen!10 called out the captain, and began to turn the ship around so as to sail the opposite direction.

The banks were suddenly filled with terrifying savages.

All were huge ,black-skinned[not the pure black of the Indians , more as you would imagine a half-caste Ethiopian], bare-headed,light of foot but broad of body. They were all speaking a barbarian language.

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Achilles Tatius: Leucippe and Clitophon (Hardcover)
by Helen Morales (Introduction), Tim Whitmarsh (Translator)