This is a terrific collection. Drago and Hodkinson have assembled a volume that achieves a lot more than what the title tantalisingly suggests. Their aim is to spearhead a fresh interpretative wave of ancient erotic epistolography, placing side by side familiar Greek and Latin texts that have often been read in an isolated manner with other lesser-known texts, such as those of Aristaenetus and Theophylact Simocatta, and to study the diverse writers under this new heading. The breadth of the material can at times be disorientating, but the approach is undoubtedly a rewarding one.
The introduction deftly outlines the volume's mission, divided into three cohesive and organic parts (‘Structural Perspectives’, ‘Intertextuality’, ‘Cultural Issues and Backgrounds’). The editors are upfront about possible ‘charges of anachronism’ levelled against the project due to the virtually non-existent ancient references to a separate genre of ‘love letters’. The ensuing discussion is critical: genres themselves are characteristically recognised retrospectively, only emerging as genres – social practices – once enough examples amass. Later works illustrate this by both referencing and transforming earlier forms, retroactively establishing the ‘love’ letter as a recognised, and recognisable, category.
I. Nilsson's chapter reprises the thorny issue of genre resisting the straitjacket of traditional taxonomy. Moving beyond the restrictive definition of ‘erotic letters’ given in Ps.-Libanius (Charac. Epist. 44 and 91), Nilsson reflects that the traditional ‘types’ of letters – ‘genuine (often Roman) and fictional (often Greek) letters’ (p. 30) – share emotional and communicative strategies. Affective intensities are intrinsic to letter-writing, whether fictional or real (a point anticipating Rosenmeyer's chapter); moreover, any idea of truth in letter-writing lies in the dynamic operative between writer and reader, embodying a performative rather than an absolute truth. The definition of a love letter assumes a more energetic form: it should not be seen as a distinct subgenre; rather, the social and emotional role of letters ought to be underscored. The discourse of desire, Nilsson notes, like letter writing, is inherently relational, and letters not only express an absence but also embody the other's presence. Her discussion of genre and T.M. Conley's work (1979) will interest anyone studying ancient generic systems.
Returning to ancient theorisations, R.J. Gallé Cejudo offers a valuable overview of themes and common patterns in the main collections of Greek love letters (e.g. the encomiastic description of female beauty, love's relationship with nature, unrequited love). Many of the themes foregrounded here find expansion in the volume, such as the use of love letters as a literary device within the narratives of Chariton, Xenophon, Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus, or the dynamism of cross-generic interactions of ancient epistolography with other Hellenistic genres, such as the epigram, the idyll and the erotic tale.
P.A. Rosenmeyer develops the epistolary tenet that letters visualise physical presence, making a vital distinction between letters sent in contexts of amicitia, where friendly amor is manifest (the letter's ‘metonymical’ function), and erotic letters, where the epistle takes on a synecdochic role, calling attention to physical/organic traces of the sender, such as tears or blood, creating direct contact with the recipient. Even in the most emotional letters between Cicero and his quasi me alterum (Att. 3.15.4), Atticus, the epistolary fantasy does not necessarily extend to conjuring up the unmediated physicality of the body and its vestigia, for which the partly embodied Heroides are a case in point (cf. Funke's chapter). I very much hope that the succinct hint of the emotionally charged language of Ovid's exilic poetry as a sort of ‘love’ letter, and the discussion of the sexualisation of letters and the anxieties regarding the letter as the lover's proxy, spur further work.
E. Bowie's chapter moves somewhat away from formally defined letters, tackling the intriguing issue of the functionality of poems as vehicles for communication, not just sung for one audience but meant to be learned and repeated by an intermediary (seen in the accounts of Herodotus and Strabo regarding an anecdote involving Alcaeus). The agency of the intermediary raises intriguing questions on the role (and function) of the κῆρυξ. The discussion of the 158 elegiac lines added to the Theognidea is striking: not only is this poetry written to commemorate the singer's love for his eromenos, but also, with the anonymous ‘boy’ addressee, it could be interpreted as a sort of ‘manual’ to support the creation and performance of songs tailored to named addressees. We may be dealing, then, with the classification of a proto-love manual.
In Part 2 both A.D. Morrison and A. Pontoropoulos focus on the arrangement of letters in the collections of Plato and Philostratus. Morrison makes a convincing case to read Plato's pseudepigraphic letters in the sequence transmitted in the earlier MSS of Plato's work (Epp. 1–13; not in the abbreviated version of later epistolaria). We can trace an ‘erotic’ leitmotif underpinning the collection, absent from the later arrangement (but not ignored by Nepos and Plutarch). This is clear in the erotic undertones of the συνουσία of Plato and Dionysus II, and the latter's ‘agonistic attitude to Plato's affections’ (p. 111), complicated by Dion's presence. Pontoropoulos schematically focuses on the similarities in individual letters of Philostratus to tease out smaller ‘cores’ of letters based on thematic clusters, with the first ‘three’ rose letters (Epp. 1, 2, 3) viewed as ‘programmatic’. Readers can now examine alongside Pontoropoulos’s discussion the recent study by Morrison (2023), which sheds more light on Kayser's F2 order found in several MSS (which begins with Epp. 3, 54, 1 and 2, but then continues with Epp. 46, 20, 9, 55, 17, 63, 4, 21), showing that a thematic authorial order is being pursued. A minor qualm in an otherwise admirable chapter: from an intertextual perspective, in the discussion of Letter 3 it is not entirely clear what the force and meaning of the Iliadic allusion is.
Drago sheds light on the collection of 500 letters penned by Aristaenetus the Magpie (W.G. Arnott's definition), showing the depth of his metatextual relations with the tradition, arguing that these allusive epistles will benefit from an analysis transcending Quellenforschung, based on an intertextual framework that examines how other texts are being invoked, and how their deployment might generate new meaning. The discussion of the ‘realist debasement of tragic diction’ (p. 153), further realised in the detorsio in comicum and ‘degradazione del modello’, is illuminating, and the point in the final footnote regarding the place of irony and parody in poetics, and their effect on the reader, deserves further study.
Hyperliterarity continues with Hodkinson, who detects three Ovidian ‘intertextual’ echoes in Philostratus’ Epp. 55, 61, 54. Pushing determinedly and convincingly against the dogmatic view that Imperial Greek authors ‘would not dream of alluding to the literature of their Roman rulers’ (p. 159), Hodkinson carefully draws out Philostratus’ nods to Ovid. Though the tricky question of ‘allusion’ vs ‘intertext’ comes to the fore, the section on Philostratus’ engagement with Amores 2.15 is persuasive and shows this intertextual game at its best, with both verbal and thematic similarities; indeed, the letter's close with the ‘fiery’ order of κατακαύσατε might be violently one-upping the more suffused sexual ardour at Amores 2.15.25–6. Z. Chadha reads Her. 6 as a literary adaptation of a prayer for justice: it incorporates a personal and slanderous attack (diabolē) against Medea, accused of having used erotic magic to win over Jason (absent in the sources). Within the letter's context seen as a performative speech-act in a magic ritual, Hypsipyle's self-presentation as a victim of a personal injury is directed at moving the gods (Jupiter), partly explaining the lack of focus on Jason. Some of the conclusions are fascinating, such as the failure of the epistolary mode in the Heroides. I just wondered whether we could contrast Dido's destructive curse in Aen. 4 with Hypsipyle's words (likewise addressed to Jupiter).
In Part 3 É. Marquis continues the discussions in Part 1 of the structural issues of ‘love’ vs ‘erotic’ letter in Alciphron. Marquis shows well that love is all around Alciphron's letters (but cautions readers that the author seldom allows for a ‘happily ever after’); its epistolary written expression does not recognise social status, and the senders express their desires through contextually relevant references. Marquis makes the compelling case that we should read the love letters as a unit that adds coherence to the corpus, where variatio of perspectives as well as the presence of different outcomes arising from similar situations add to Alciphron's poikilia. Marquis's argument regarding the original ordering of Alciphron's books as progressively cementing love as central illustrates the importance of reading ancient letters in the context of their collection and its transmission in the MS tradition.
M. Funke examines women's voices in female letter writing (Ovid's Heroides, Leucippe's epistolary persona, and the fourth book of Alciphron's letters), noting that, whilst epistolography might not allow for a true representation of women's thoughts/feelings, it affords a careful self-fashioning adding nuance to the issue of ‘ventriloquism’ of a male author and his female character(s). Expanding on Gallé Cejudo's analysis of the importance of letters inserted into wider narratives (e.g. Leucippe to Clitophon in 5.18), Funke argues that fiction extends to female self-presentation, often intentionally presented as undiluted. The fiction of women's subjectivity in epistolary conventions becomes an integral part of this genre of fictional ‘love’ letters.
S.D. Smith's chapter focuses on the Byzantine epistolographer Theophylact Simocatta. Smith proposes that the structural division of the letters (epistolē ēthikē, agroikikē and hetairikē) mirrors the tripartite soul in Plato's Republic, and the Platonic idea is reflected in the characters themselves (philosophers, guardians and workers). Focusing on the erotic elements of the ‘moral’ Ep. 43, where the aptly named sender Diogenes is defending himself against public accusations of tolerance towards an abusive Lydian eunuch, the letter destabilises its professed philosophical patina through the eroticisation of the eunuch, and it exposes Diogenes’ weakened position. The ongoing work by Smith on Theophylact's fictional worlds will expand horizons, especially in terms of authorial reasons for undercutting the collection's triadic structure and, again, the overall effect of tongue-in-cheek parody.
L. Del Corso concludes with a deep dive into the real letters of Roman soldiers stationed in praesidia of the Eastern desert. I found the chapter a fascinating window into possible avenues to study emotional dynamics in this body of texts, and the gradual move in depths of content from the Hellenistic period to late antique Egypt is intriguing. Many of the underlying questions regarding the communicative function of the letter form must be key in future studies of the development of desire in ancient erotic epistolography.
In sum, this is a labour of love: the next instalment could focus on ‘What is Love’ (in epistolography), a recurrent stream that merits additional scrutiny (the editors note that the correspondence between Fronto and Marcus Aurelius muddies the waters). In spite of its extensive coverage, I urge readers to take Ancient Love Letters as a whole: they will not only discover non-canonical ‘voices’ who deserve much more attention, but also consistent leitmotifs (e.g. the materiality of the erotic letter, the fiction and fantasy of raw ‘directness’, the affective intensities created in the act of reading or the playful self-consciousness of epistolography). The editors must be praised for a rigorous offering of thought-provoking positions in the ongoing efforts to widen studies of ancient letters.
