Heliodorus of Emesa was a Greek novelist of the 3rd or 4th century CE. The 10th-century Suda lexicon identifies him as a Phoenician from Emesa who later became a bishop, but modern scholars consider this a conflation with a Christian bishop of the same name. His sophisticated literary technique supports an earlier Imperial date. His birthplace, a center for the cult of the sun god Elagabal, may inform the prominent solar imagery and Ethiopian setting of his work.

His sole surviving work is the Aethiopica, or An Ethiopian Story, a complete novel in ten books. Heliodorus authored the longest and most complex surviving ancient Greek novel. The Aethiopica is noted for its intricate, suspenseful plot and sophisticated narrative structure, which begins in the middle of the action. Highly regarded in the Byzantine era and rediscovered in the Renaissance, it profoundly influenced European literature, including the works of Tasso, Cervantes, and Sidney. The novel also provides a notable Greco-Roman perspective on Ethiopia.