Ancient Letters: Classical and Late Antique Epistolography
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The surviving body of ancient letters offers the reader a stunning variety of material, ranging from the everyday letters preserved among the Oxyrhynchus papyri to imperial rescripts, New Testament Epistles, fictional or pseudepigraphical letters and a wealth of missives on almost every conceivable subject. They offer us a unique insight into ancient practices in the fields of politics, literature, philosophy, medicine and many other areas. This collection presents a series of case studies in ancient letters, asking how each letter writer manipulates the epistolary tradition, why he chose the letter form over any other, and what effect the publication of volumes of collected letters might have had upon a reader's engagement with epistolary works. This volume is the first of its kind on ancient letters in any language, and it brings together both well-established and promising young scholars currently working in the fields of ancient literature, history, philosophy and medicine to engage in a shared debate about this most adaptable and 'interdisciplinary' of genres.
List of Abbreviations xvList of Contributors xviIntroduction: What is a Letter? Roy K. Gibson A. D. Morrison 1Down among the Documents: Criticism and Papyrus Letters G. O. Hutchinson 17'... when who should walk into the room but ...': Epistoliterarity in Cicero, Ad Qfr. 3.1 John Henderson 37Cicero's 'Stomach': Political Indignation and the Use of Repeated Allusive Expressions in Cicero's Correspondence Stanley E. Hoffer 87Didacticism and Epistolarity in Horace's Epistles 1 A. D. Morrison 107The Importance of Form in Seneca's Philosophical Letters Brad Inwood 133Letters of Recommendation and the Rhetoric of Praise Roger Rees 149Confidence, Inuidia, and Pliny's Epistolary Curriculum Ruth Morello 169The Letter's the Thing (in Pliny, Book 7) William Fitzgerald 191The Epistula in Ancient Scientific and Technical Literature, with Special Reference to Medicine D. R. Langslow 211Back to Fronto: Doctor and Patient in his Correspondence with an Emperor Annelise Freisenbruch 235Alciphron's Epistolarity Jason Konig 257Better thanSpeech: Some Advantages of the Letter in the Second Sophistic Owen Hodkinson 283Mixed Messages: The Play of Epistolary Codes in Two Late Antique Latin Correspondences Jennifer Ebbeler 301St Patrick and the Art of Allusion Andrew Fear 325Appendix to Chapter 14: Epistola ad Milites Corotici, translated by David Howlett 338Bibliography 349Index Locorum 367General Index 371
