After more than ten years in the making, Handbuch Brief. Antike was published in 2025. The following numbers illustrate the scale of the handbook, and the enormity of the task undertaken by its editors Becker, Egelhaaf-Gaiser and Fürst: together, the two substantial volumes are 1,172 pages long and contain 101 entries written by 76 contributors (several authors have written more than one article). It covers an impressive breadth of letters in terms of chronology, geography, cultures and materials – ranging from the ninth century bce (letters mentioned in the Hebrew Bible) to the sixth century ce (Cassiodorus’ Variae), from Vindolanda to Egypt, from classical antiquity to Christian and Jewish letter writing practices, from papyri and wax tablets to ostraca and inscriptions – not to mention topics and content, ranging from birthday invitations and edicts to love letters and theological disputes. The wide scope of the handbook captures the generic fluidity and thematic variety of the letter, which made it notoriously hard to define (as pointed out by several contributions, e.g. pp. 3–5).
The book is divided into four sections: the first volume contains Sections I–III, the second contains Section IV. The volumes are of a similar length, with the first one taking up roughly 55% of the material and the second roughly 45%. Section I, ‘Der Brief als Forschungsfeld’, gives an overview of past and present scholarship on epistolography in Classics, New Testament Studies, Patristics, History and Papyrology (c. 11% of the book). Section II, ‘Theoretisch-systematische Perspektiven: Akteure, Institutionen, Konventionen, Techniken’, is a synopsis of the production, stylistic features and reception of letters (c. 18% of the book). Section III, ‘Briefgenres’, presents 28 epistolary genres (c. 25% of the book). Section IV, ‘Briefgeschichte – Materialitäten – Zeitgenossenschaften und Netzwerke – Briefrezeption’, traces the historical development of the letter genre and gives an overview of various letter writing cultures (c. 45% of the book). The remaining 1% is made up of a brief introduction and indexes.
The book follows two patterns of arrangement familiar from ancient letter collections: a thematic and a chronological ordering principle (the seminal study by R. Gibson, ‘On the Nature of Ancient Letter Collections’, JRS 102 [2012], 56–78, demonstrates the care with which authors and editors organised books of letters). The first part of the book introduces readers to the conditions under which letters were written, sent and collected, and organises letters according to content, providing an extensive discussion of various types of letters. It depicts the whole ‘lifespan’ of a letter: from epistolary topics and occasions for letter-writing (III) and the writing process (II.A and II.B) to the materials involved (IV.A), the selection of addressees (II.B.6 and II.C.1) and, finally, the letter’s delivery. The second part presents (most of) the extant letter collections in a chronological arrangement spanning from the letters of ‘Phalaris’ to Cassiodorus. As the book moves from the wide, bird’s-eye perspective on the field towards particular letter types and, finally, individual letter collections and authors, its focus steadily becomes narrower (again, resembling the arrangement of an ancient letter collection such as Seneca’s Epistulae Morales).
Due to the sheer number of articles, I cannot discuss every contribution, and doing so would make for a rather tedious review. Instead, I shall discuss each section and point out the strengths and shortcomings of the book as a whole. Overall, the quality of the individual contributions is consistently high, and the book is exceptionally well produced and proofread, a remarkable achievement given the number of contributions and the size of the handbook.
The first section, ‘Der Brief als Forschungsfeld’, critically evaluates the relevant scholarship on epistolography in Classics (Egelhaaf-Gaiser), New Testament Studies (Becker), Patristics (Fürst), History (M. Hoskin) and Papyrology (P. Arzt-Grabner), presenting a panorama of scholarship from the early twentieth century all the way to 2024. Taken together, the contributions provide readers with a useful map that helps them navigate the extensive scholarship on letters. Hoskin’s contribution overlaps significantly with Egelhaaf-Gaiser’s and Fürst’s as well as with the overviews provided in IV.B (‘Briefkulturen’, esp. IV.B.2 and 4) and with E. Watts’s excellent piece on ‘Letter collections as a reading tool’, which explores the implications of the artistic arrangement and textual dynamics at play in letter collections for historians working on epistolary corpora (II.C.3). It is also the only contribution in Section I written in English, its structure and focus decidedly different from its German counterparts: an overview of ancient letter collections (pp. 88–97) receives the same attention as a synopsis of current and past historical scholarship on letters (pp. 97–105), whereas the German contributions focus exclusively on the history, and future, of scholarship on letters and the thematic clusters and trends emerging from it. The ratio of German to English articles in the first section corresponds with their ratio in the book overall, which includes 78 German and 23 English articles. This mixture has led to some slightly awkward juxtapositions, for instance in II.B.6 on epistolary networks, which is separated into a German contribution on network analysis in Classics and an English equivalent for Patristics; in IV.C.16 and 17 with a German article on Fronto’s letters and an English one on Marcus Aurelius’ letters; and, lastly, in the alphabetically ordered Section III (‘Briefgenres’) containing five English articles out of 28 overall (consolatio, consolation letter; embedded letter; epistolary novel, fictional letter; festal letter; prison letter).
Section II, ‘Theoretisch-systematische Perspektiven’, is divided into three parts: II.A on the production of letters (‘Produktion und Produktionsbedingungen von Briefen’), II.B on the style and use of letters (‘Stilistik, Form und Funktion von Briefen’) and II.C on the reception of letters (‘Rezeption und Rezeptionsbedingungen von Briefen’). Whereas the first part seems rather disjointed – self-fashioning (II.A.1) and intertextuality (II.A.2) are housed under the same roof as secretaries (II.A.3) and public administration (II.A.4) –, the second part is more homogeneous and forms a coherent unit. I particularly enjoyed reading the contributions by S. Seibert on epistolary theory (II.B.1), by R. Schwitter on epistolary style (II.B.3) and by C. Cvetković on epistolary networks in patristic letter collections (II.B.6.2). N. Hömke’s piece on private letters, in which she discusses four well-chosen examples of Vindolanda tablets (II.A.5), is wonderfully clear and engaging.
Section III, ‘Briefgenres’, systematises letters into genre categories based on writer (e.g. III.1 ‘Apostelbrief’), addressee (e.g. III.5 ‘Diasporabrief’), content (e.g. III.20 ‘Liebesbrief’) and function (e.g. III.19 ‘Lehrbrief’). The section gives a good idea of the thematic breadth and variety of ancient letter-writing although it can be difficult to distinguish neatly between some epistolary genres, for example between ‘Kaiserbrief’ and ‘Edikt’, as T. Witulski, the author of the article on edicts (III.16.1), points out (p. 493). At first glance, the inclusion of a piece on private letters as a genre (III.26 ‘Privatbrief’) might seem to create an unnecessary overlap with, and repetition of, II.A.5 (‘Privat- und Alltagsbriefe’), but Arzt-Grabner manages to draw out different aspects of everyday letter-writing by focusing mainly on papyrus letters.
Finally, Section IV contains three parts: IV.A on ostraca letters and letters on inscriptions (‘Materialitäten’), IV.B on ancient letter writing cultures (‘Briefkulturen’) and IV.C on individual letter authors, presented in chronological order (‘Briefautoren’). The overview in IV.C is useful, despite some unexplained gaps: there are no entries on the pseudepigraphic letter collections of Themistocles, Pythagoras/the Pythagoreans and Socrates, nor is there an entry on Chion of Heraclea. These letters do feature in II.B.5 ‘Pseudepigraphische und unechte Briefe bei Griechen und Römern’ and in III.10 ‘Epistolary novel, fictional letter’. IV.B ‘Briefkulturen’ is the part that stood out for me: by putting Hebrew and Jewish, Graeco-Roman, early Christian and late antique letter writing side by side, the editors have produced a truly panoramic view of the genre, allowing its readers to overcome disciplinary boundaries and to explore letters in adjacent fields. This all-encompassing and interdisciplinary view on letters is what makes the handbook unique and wherein the major contribution to the study of epistolography lies; I believe it will make the handbook unrivalled for a long time to come.
Readers, especially those sceptical of handbooks, might ask: does a genre that is known for its brevity really need a handbook of such epic proportions? The answer is a resounding yes. Thousands of letters have survived from antiquity, making epistolography its largest, best preserved and most ubiquitous genre, and any serious attempt to look at the genre holistically must result in a sizeable output. The sheer size of the handbook does justice to the vast amounts of epistolary writing still available to us. While the quantity of ancient letters makes the genre so rich and fascinating, it also poses a major problem for research on epistolography: the time and effort required to get an overview of such a vast field can seem prohibitive and might explain why publications focus on individual letter collections and authors rather than on the genre as a whole (a trend that Egelhaaf-Gaiser identifies on pp. 25–6). By providing a thorough overview of the field and a snapshot of the relevant past and current scholarship, the editors have done the research community a great service: their handbook can be used as a springboard for new research. Several authors even present ideas for future research projects (see e.g. pp. 25–6; 47; 80–1; 104–5; 122–3; 236; 314–15). Letters are a big mountain to climb, and the handbook has certainly made it easier and much less intimidating. We can look forward to the scholarship on letters inspired by this book.
