C.'s careful and richly documented study begins and ends with questions about a particular category of ancient Greek letters and a particular context for their composition, sending and receipt. As she explains in the preface, her point of entry was a desire to understand the workings of the letter as a medium of political communication and action in the Seleucid royal correspondence (p. v); in the epilogue, she signs off on the brief of exploring ‘the development of letter writing until it became the instrument of royal communication and the connotations acquired by official correspondence, as opposed to public speech or other forms of writing’ (p. 331). This angle of approach determines the choice of raw materials and the questions put to them in the book's successive chapters. Letters are by definition written documents, so how can their incidence and spread be plotted against the diffusion and employment of writing more generally, and how far is their reception coloured by more general ideas about the possibilities and problems of writing? Letters are a subdivision of the larger category of messages, which includes oral as well as written communication, and other written forms than just the letter, so what can be said about the interface or choice between the several options? Royal letters are political gestures, so what is there to be said about the presence and use of letters in political space, both Greek and Eastern, and about the perceived entanglement of letters and royal power, in the centuries before the emergence of the Hellenistic monarchies? Surviving royal letters are known from inscriptions, principally commissioned by the recipients not the senders, so what is to be said about the use of letters by those recipients on their own account, and the integration of inscribed letters into their epigraphic culture?

The introduction provides a working definition of the kind ‘letter’, and a tidy preliminary survey of letter-types, the mechanics of letter-sending in antiquity and (most usefully of all) the standard vocabulary for referring to letters. Chapter 2 then surveys the very earliest documentary evidence for Greek letter writing, from the sixth and fifth centuries b.c., contextualised against what we know of the broader spectrum of contemporary uses of writing. C. points to the absence in this period of what were later to become the standard formal markers of epistolarity (standard formulae for address, salutation and concluding good wishes, shift from third to first person between salutation and main message) and convincingly diagnoses a state of affairs in which the letter had not yet crystallised as a distinct form, in contrast to oral messages in the one direction, and other forms of directed written communication (above all, epigram and curse) in the other. This chapter is supported by Appendix 1, which gives texts, translations and bibliographic references for these sixth- to fourth-century inscribed letters. With Chapter 3 the focus shifts to perceptions: the representation and connotations of writing and letter writing from Homer to tragedy and early historiography, and beyond. This is in some ways an awkwardly bitty and diverse chapter. In order to introduce all the important themes which C. wishes to bring into the discussion at this point – the potential untrustworthiness of letters, the entanglement of letters with royal (especially eastern royal) power, the emergence of distinctively epistolary formulae – she has both to skip around chronologically – all the way from Homer (the celebrated σήματα λυγρά carried by Bellerophon from Proetus to the King of Lycia in Il. 6.168–70) to Lucian (for a story the origins of the epistolary salutation χαίρειν in his Pro lapsu) – and also to deal briefly and selectively with material to which she will return more fully in subsequent chapters. Chapter 4 surveys the rising tide of letters and epistolary communication in historical writing from Herodotus to Polybius, via Ctesias as well as Thucydides and Xenophon. The use of letters is meticulously tracked against recourse to oral communication and non-epistolary writing in the various narratives in question, and connections to the authors' larger thematic concerns alertly drawn. Chapter 5 turns the spotlight onto drama. Where tragedy is concerned, discussion of Aeschylus and Sophocles, for want of any references specifically to letters, has to concentrate on what they have to say about writing; with Euripides, much more satisfyingly, not only are there multiple references to letters, but whole scenes and even whole plays (Hippolytus, both Iphigenias) turn on letters and their ability to misdirect and deceive as well as inform. Comedy offers much less material for discussion; C. does her best with a fragment from the Sappho of Antiphanes in which ‘a letter’ is the answer to a riddle (pp. 244–57), but the result is a rather over-extended discussion leading to a pair of tentative and not fully convincing conclusions, about the perceived femininity of letter writing and an accompanying unease about the use of letters in political contexts. Some of this space might have been better given to a more extended consideration of how the shift from Old to New Comic plotting opened up new possibilities for dramatic epistolography. Chapter 6 looks at letters in the Attic orators, with a series of interesting observations on how references to letters can function in the context of an orator's persuasive strategies, but no very marked overall line of argument. Discussion of Isocrates naturally brings up the question of epistolary treatises (pp. 286–92), but the political focus of C.'s interests and chapter structure mean that this promising line of investigation cannot be extended, just as it also ensures that some revealing comments on letters and letter writing by the philosophers Theophrastus and Aristo (p. 294) receive only fleeting mention. Chapter 7, finally, looks at inscribed official letters in the Hellenistic period, examining the interaction of epistle and decree, and drawing attention to a substantial body of evidence for the use of letters by poleis as well as monarchs, especially – C. argues – poleis of a more oligarchic tendency which lacked the strong distinction between public and private that was characteristic of democracies. This chapter is supported by Appendix 3, which gives the texts of inscribed polis letters from 242 to 25 b.c.

This is a book which covers a huge amount of ground in a lucid and organised manner, with an intelligent awareness of the intricacies of the materials it is working with, and an admirable readiness to keep different levels of historical and literary analysis in play throughout. Along the way it makes considerable demands on the patience and stamina of the reader. This is partly because of C.'s endearing reluctance to let a good problem pass by undiscussed, which can sometimes obscure the forward movement of her analysis, and partly because her preferred mode of procedure is systematic completeness rather than selection and representative example; it is revealing that her chapter endings often lay as much stress on the fact that a given body of material has been thoroughly accounted for as they do on any interpretative conclusions. I do also wonder whether the book fully earns its very general title and subtitle. C. is clear that her main focus is on the public and the political in the composing, sending and receiving of letters; other domains enter the discussion only in so far as they are needed to support this line of enquiry, and in proportion to their ancillary role. A proper cultural history of ancient Greek letter writing would surely have to cover more and more evenly. Discussion of the epistolary treatise would have to be extended to cover Epicurus and his school, and above all more space would have to be found to analyse and interpret the mass of private and business letters on papyrus from Hellenistic Egypt. C.'s work is impressive within its own chosen limits, but it is by no means the full story.