My focus is on the intersection of two different senses of “virtuality”: virtuality as the vivid imagination of an unreal world (approaching the concept of fiction, but with more sense of active participation on the part of the person experiencing the fantasy); and virtuality as the presence of “virtue”, or moral excellence. At the most basic level: is fantasy corrupting? The question, for us, is framed in terms of specifically modern technologies and genres: television, movies, video games, and so on. But did a similar set of anxieties also exist in antiquity? How does the genre make a difference? I hope to address this issue by looking at one particular ancient genre: the Greek "novel", which I will juxtapose with ancient rhetorical theory and ancient discussions of education, to try to analyse ancient feelings about the dangers and temptations of being lost in a work of art.