Bringing together an international team of historians, classicists, and scholars of religion, this volume provides the first comprehensive overview of the extant Greek and Latin letter collections of late antiquity (ca. 300–600 c.e.). Each chapter addresses a major collection of Greek or Latin literary letters, introducing the social and textual histories of each collection and examining its assembly, publication, and transmission. Contributions also reveal how collections operated as discrete literary genres, with their own conventions and self-presentational agendas. This book will fundamentally change how people both read these texts and use letters to reconstruct the social history of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries.

Bringing together an international team of historians, classicists, and scholars of religion, this volume provides the first comprehensive overview of the extant Greek and Latin letter collections of late antiquity (ca. 300–600 c.e.). Each chapter addresses a major collection of Greek or Latin literary letters, introducing the social and textual histories of each collection and examining its assembly, publication, and transmission. Contributions also reveal how collections operated as discrete literary genres, with their own conventions and self-presentational agendas. This book will fundamentally change how people both read these texts and use letters to reconstruct the social history of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries.

List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Greek and Latin Epistolography and Epistolary Collections in Late Antiquity
Cristiana Sogno, Bradley K. Storin, and Edward J. Watts
How to Use This Book
1. Latin Letter Collections before Late Antiquity
Michele Renee Salzman
2. Greek Letter Collections before Late Antiquity
Christopher P. Jones
3. The Letter Collection of the Emperor Julian
Susanna Elm
4. The Letter Collection of Basil of Caesarea
Andrew Radde-Gallwitz
5. The Letter Collection of Gregory of Nazianzus
Bradley K. Storin
6. The Letter Collection of Gregory of Nyssa
Andrew Radde-Gallwitz
7. The Letter Collection of Libanius of Antioch
Lieve Van Hoof
8. The Letter Collection of Ausonius
Charles N. Aull
9. The Letter Collection of Ambrose of Milan
Gérard Nauroy
10. The Letter Collection of Evagrius of Pontus
Robin Darling Young
11. The Letter Collection of Quintus Aurelius Symmachus
Cristiana Sogno
12. The Letter Collection of John Chrysostom
Daniel Washburn
13. The Letter Collection of Synesius of Cyrene
David Maldonado Rivera
14. The Letter Collections of Jerome of Stridon
Andrew Cain
15. The Letter Collection of Augustine of Hippo
Jennifer V. Ebbeler
16. The Letter Collection of Paulinus of Nola
Dennis Trout
17. The Letter Collection of Theodoret of Cyrrhus
Adam M. Schor
18. The Letter Collection of Isidore of Pelusium
Lillian I. Larsen
19. The Letter Collection of Sidonius Apollinaris
Sigrid Mratschek
20. The Letter Collection of Ruricius of Limoges
Ralph W. Mathisen
21. The Letter Collection of Avitus of Vienne
Brendan McCarthy
22. The Letter Collection of Ennodius of Pavia
Stefanie A. H. Kennell
23. The Letter Collection of Aeneas of Gaza
Edward J. Watts
24. The Letter Collection of Procopius of Gaza
David Westberg
25. The Letter Collection of Barsanuphius and John
Jennifer L. Hevelone-Harper
26. The Letter Collection of Cassiodorus
Shane Bjornlie
27. Papal Letters and Letter Collections
Bronwen Neil

List of Contributors
Index