This book makes an important contribution to what we may call the ‘social interactional approach’ to Cicero's correspondence – an approach that focuses on the letters not as literary artefacts but as documents that illustrate how relationships between powerful Romans were negotiated (p. 81). From this interactional perspective, the term ‘sociabilité’ in B.'s title refers not to a correspondent's degree of conviviality in a general sense (p. 21), but to the role played by social rapport in the cultivation of personal relationships (pp. 22–3). As B. demonstrates, the writer of a letter can deploy a range of strategies in order to promote rapport with the addressee. Most obviously perhaps, these include matters of style and content, such as linguistic informality and references to shared cultural interests. But extra-epistolary elements, such as the physical materials used in writing a letter and the choice of courier, could also influence the way in which an exchange of correspondence was perceived (pp. 38–52).

This line of inquiry is not new. Several recent books have adopted a similar perspective. See, for example, P. White, Cicero in Letters: Epistolary Relations of the Late Republic (2010), my own Politeness and Politics in Cicero's Letters (2009), parts of A. Wilcox, The Gift of Correspondence in Classical Rome (2012) and, from a broader sociological perspective, E. Deniaux, Clientèles et Pouvoir à l’époque de Cicéron (1993). And these works in turn draw upon earlier studies that examine specific interactional aspects of the letters. (To cite just two: J.N. Adams, ‘Conventions of Naming in Cicero’, CQ 28 [1978], 145–66; and S. Roesch, ‘La Politesse dans la Correspondance de Cicéron’, in L. Nadjo and E. Gavoille [edd.], Epistulae Antiquae III [2004], pp. 139–52.) Nevertheless, B.'s contribution is significant in two respects. First, his skilful integration of these previous studies provides a clear and judicious survey of the many elements that played a part in epistolary negotiations; and second, through a careful application of the results of this survey, B. presents a fresh and insightful analysis of Cicero's correspondence with Pompey, Caesar and Dolabella.

The work is divided into three sections, each of which examines some of the ‘contraintes socio-discursives’ that shaped the practice of letter-writing in Ciceronian Rome. The first part considers ‘contraintes matérielles et fonctionelles’ (p. 28) and begins by addressing the mechanics of writing and delivering letters in the Late Republic. B. then goes on to examine how the subject matter of a letter imposed certain sociolinguistic constraints on the writer (p. 71), a topic that leads in turn to the discussion of the different types of letter in our corpus (e.g. letters of recommendation, consolation, advice and so on) and their use in the cultivation of amicitia.

The second section examines the influence of ‘contraintes personelles’ on Roman correspondence; that is, the way in which the style and content of a letter are influenced by the character and social rank of the addressee. B. here gives a review of the conventionalised elements of particularly formal letters, including the terms of address used, inscriptions, farewells and so on (pp. 133–45), and the ways in which these can be manipulated for complimentary effect (p. 146). B. then explores Cicero's construction of epistolary personae, astutely drawing attention to the tension between the interpretation of the letters (especially those to Atticus) as an unmediated expression of Cicero's true self and those that seem to feature a carefully constructed self-image (pp. 174–6; 407). B. aptly notes the ‘pacte epistolaire’ that often seems to exist between correspondents in such exchanges (p. 110), a feature largely motivated by their mutual concern for each other's ‘face’ (see p. 195 for a useful quote from Erving Goffman). When corresponding with his inner circle of friends and acquaintances, Cicero often pays particular attention to cultivating a persona of erudition and humanitas (pp. 192–209), although in certain cases this inclination needs to be balanced with a degree of gravitas (pp. 239–41).

The third section's nuanced analysis of Cicero's correspondence with Pompey, Caesar and Dolabella will be of interest to Roman historians as well as to students of letter-writing. Since many of these epistolary exchanges derive from particularly fraught political circumstances (‘contraintes circonstancielles’), they provide excellent examples of the ways in which the conventionalised aspects of Roman letter-writing facilitated (or sometimes hindered) aristocratic interaction at times of stress. B. brings out well the subtleties of these negotiations, adroitly illustrating, for example, the attention paid to redressive facework (or, to use his term, ‘attenuation’) when one correspondent undertakes criticisms of another (see pp. 271–3 and 343–4). And B. neatly delineates not only Cicero's attempts at self-serving diplomacy, but also his correspondents' awareness of this self-interest (see e.g. p. 297). In doing so, B. vividly brings alive the tensions and mini-dramas of political negotiation in the Late Republic. (In places too B. presents useful amendments to White's analysis of the exchanges between Cicero and Caesar; see e.g. p. 367 n. 226.)

A further 130 pages are devoted to an appendix containing ‘notices épistolographiques’ on 101 of Cicero's correspondents. These entries not only set out the basic data on which the study is founded (p. 415); they also provide a useful resource for modern readers, since they include summary biographical information on each of the correspondents, as well as an assessment of their epistolographic tendencies and attempts at ‘sociabilité’ (p. 416). This section thus helps to illustrate the diffusion of conventionalised politeness strategies across a range of letter-writers.

The book is well produced (I noted only 16 misprints in some 600 pages). There is an understandable bias towards French scholarship (on p. 71 n. 2, for example, the Anglophone scholar might expect a nod to Brunt and Saller's work on amicitia, rather than a single reference to Hellegouarc'h and a French dissertation); but this tendency also brings to the fore some useful material in less familiar publications.