<p>According to a convention as old as literature, crowds have the ability to speak with one voice. Some, however, are more talkative than others. The application of the quantitative analysis method developed by Lavocat to the corpus of five surviving ancient Greek novels has revealed that the crowds in <i>Callirhoe</i> by Chariton of Aphrodisias (1st century CE) speak 2.5 to 5 times more than in the other four novels. The article then investigates the causes of this singularity. A closer look at talking crowds reveals that around half of them function as democratic assemblies, where speaking represents voting. The importance and behavior of these democratic groups support the political interpretation of the novel as proposed by Alvares. The article concludes by examining the possibility of comparing Chariton’s speaking crowds with the chorus in Greek tragedy, interpreted since Schlegel as the avatar of the city-state in myth.</p>