Greek and Latin Letters in Late Antiquity

This is the first general book on Greek and Latin letter-writing in Late Antiquity (300–600 CE). Allen and Neil examine early Christian Greek and Latin literary letters, their nature and function and the mechanics of their production and dissemination. They examine the exchange of Episcopal, monastic and imperial letters between men, and the gifts that accompanied them, and the rarer phenomenon of letter exchanges with imperial and aristocratic women. They also look at the transmission of letter-collections and what they can tell us about friendships and other social networks between the powerful elites who were the literary letter-writers of the fourth to sixth centuries. The volume gives a broad context to late-antique literary letter-writing in Greek and Latin in its various manifestations: political, ecclesiastical, practical and social. In the process, the differences between 'pagan' and Christian letter-writing are shown to be not as great as has previously been supposed.

• The first ever comprehensive treatment of Greek and Latin letter-writing in Late Antiquity
• Takes the reader through the genre of the letter, the process of writing letters and the materials used, and their dissemination down to our own times
• Demonstrates that, with the Christianisation of the letter, its pagan antecedents were not ignored but adapted