Late Antique Letter Collections: A Critical Introduction and Reference Guide
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Late Antique Letter Collections: A Critical Introduction and Reference Guide
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| ISBN-13: | 9780520966192 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of California Press |
| Publication date: | 12/06/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 488 |
| File size: | 8 MB |
About the Author
Bradley K. Storin is Assistant Professor of the Religious Studies at Louisiana State University.
Edward J. Watts is Professor and Alkiviadis Vassiladis Endowed Chair in Byzantine Greek History at the University of California, San Diego.
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Late Antique Letter Collections
A Critical Introduction and Reference Guide
By Cristiana Sogno, Bradley K. Storin, Edward J. Watts
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Copyright © 2017 The Regents of the University of CaliforniaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-96619-2
CHAPTER 1
Latin Letter Collections before Late Antiquity
MICHELE RENEE SALZMAN
You have this long while been pressing me ... to collect all the letters making any little claim to taste that have flowed from my pen on different occasions as this or that affair, person, or situation called forth, and to revise and collect the originals and combine all into a single book. In so doing, I should be following, though with presumptuous steps, the path traced by Quintus Symmachus with his rounded style and by Gaius Plinius with his highly developed artistry. Marcus Tullius, indeed, I think I had better not mention. ... Now in the first place, I have always in my own judgment fallen terribly short of all the authors I have named; and secondly, I have always strenuously proclaimed that we must uphold the well-earned right of each of them to the foremost place in his own age.
In the late fifth century, the Gallic bishop Sidonius Apollinaris proclaimed his inadequacies in comparison to Symmachus, Pliny, Cicero, and Fronto — a series of Latin epistolographers whom he called the "foremost" writers of their respective times. Though anxious about comparison with these great talents, Sidonius was nonetheless inspired by their example. Encouraged by his friend the priest Constantius, Sidonius collected and circulated — in modern terms, published — his own books of letters. Like his eminent predecessors, Sidonius no doubt hoped his letter collection would earn him the distinction of being considered in "the foremost place in his own age" (Sidon. Ep. 1.1.2).
Readers may disagree as to how well Sidonius lived up to his goal, but we should appreciate Sidonius's candor in explicitly citing his epistolary models. Cicero and Pliny the Younger are the most obvious choices, but his references to Symmachus and Fronto, and later Horace's verse epistles (see Mratschek's essay in this volume), are illuminating. Not all late antique writers were so open about their influences, nor do we always have statements about either their intent to publish or the organizational principles of their letter collections. Nonetheless, like Sidonius, modern readers should appreciate the debt owed by late antique epistolary writers to their predecessors. Indeed, by 300 C.E. letter writing in Latin had become a rich and distinctive genre. Hence, for the modern reader to appreciate the originality with which late antique writers contributed to this genre, some awareness of letter collections before late antiquity is a sine qua non.
I focus here on the most influential Latin letter collections that were in circulation in the Roman Empire around the year 300 c.E. We can appreciate their authority since they are referenced, directly or indirectly, by letter writers, grammarians, and teachers of rhetoric who, as we shall see, were charged with teaching the art of letter writing (see below). Almost all of the letter collections were prose, but some verse letter collections, notably those of Horace and Ovid, were referenced in late antiquity, especially by those writers who had more literary goals, such as Ausonius and Sidonius Apollinaris (see the essays by Aull and Mratschek in this volume).
Scholars do not agree about the outlines and, at times, the content of a number of the earlier Latin letter collections that served as models for late antique epistolographers, and consensus is all but impossible when, as is true for some collections, like that of Varro, the letters are fragmentary. And just as we cannot be certain about the content of these collections at the time they were made, we cannot always know what form these early letter collections took after 300. So, for example, some scholars have claimed that Symmachus and Ambrose modeled their collections on Pliny's ten-book letter collection, not realizing that Pliny's collection circulated in both a ten- and a nine-book edition in the fourth century (see my discussion below). The number of books raises a key interpretive question: Did Pliny intend to include his tenth book of official letters to the emperor Trajan in his epistolary collection or not? Hence, what kind of model did Pliny's letter collection offer to a late antique writer? I have argued that although the fourth-century orator Symmachus was inspired by Pliny to publish a book of letters to articulate a vision of his family, friends, and values, he did not intend to publish his official letters, the Relationes or State Papers, in imitation of Pliny's book 10, as some scholars have argued.
It should be clear to the modern reader that although all late antique letter writers in Latin were indebted to their literary predecessors, their reactions to this influence varied. Some, such as Jerome (see Cain's essay in this volume), reveled in emulation and exercised their mastery of existing forms to demonstrate their superior literary talents. Others, like Sidonius (as noted in the epigraph to this chapter), expressed admiration and some anxiety about living up to recognized models. I will note some of this influence on later writers in passing, but I have kept my comments on specific authors brief in order to avoid redundancy. The reader should look at the essays that follow for fuller discussion. All late antique letter collections, however, were informed by the same epistolary conventions and traditions, the general outlines of which were well established by 300 C.E.
LATIN LETTER COLLECTIONS BEFORE 300 C.E.: SOME GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
The extant evidence indicates that Roman writers considered the letter collections of Cicero as foundational for Latin rhetorical training. By late antiquity, the letter collection of Pliny emerges as the second most influential collection, especially among those late antique writers who planned to publish their own work. Romans valued both collections for some of the same reasons. Both Cicero and Pliny demonstrated their nuanced command of epistolary convention, even as each developed distinctive literary styles. Moreover, Cicero and Pliny were important historical figures; each had been active in his own world at the highest levels of government. Hence, the letters of both men offered historical insights into themselves, their correspondents, and their age. This latter aspect is what the first-century writer Nepos praised in Cicero's Letters to Atticus:
Eleven rolls of letters, sent to Atticus from the time of Cicero's consulship right down to the end: should anyone read them, he would feel no need for a detailed history of the times. For they offer so full a record of everything to do with the statesmen's pursuits, generals' failings, and changes in the state.
Cicero's reputation as an orator and Pliny's as an advocate added further luster to their letters in the eyes of later generations of teachers of rhetoric, and it was these men who taught letter writing. By the fourth century, the rhetorician Julius Victor justified an epistolary convention by simply citing Cicero: "Sometimes it is agreeable to write as though you were conversing with the person actually present, using expressions like 'you too?' and 'Just as you say!'. ... which are amply found in Cicero's [personal] letters."
After the collections of Cicero and Pliny, the most frequently cited collections are those by renowned men and women, be they philosophers, teachers, wise men, emperors, elite women, or military leaders. In Latin, we also have a certain number of letter collections written by Christians living in the Roman Empire before 300 C.E., but it is striking that there is almost no evidence for Jews writing in Latin before or after 300.
Interest in the private lives of notable figures also fueled the publication of the letters of fictitious people, including mythological figures such as those who appear in Ovid's Heroides. This genre encouraged others to compose fictitious letters for historical figures, such as the fabricated but very popular correspondence between Seneca and Paul (see below). The distinction between "real" and "fictional" letters was not felt as keenly in antiquity as it is today. For instance, there is no reason to doubt the existence of the men to whom Horace wrote in his first book of verse letters; the occasions for many of the letters, however, are clearly fictitious: Horace's letter to a certain Torquatus inviting him to come from Rome to Horace's Sabine farm for dinner the same evening, and asking Torquatus to let Horace know what other people to invite for that same night, is not plausible in real time and space.But that is not the point.
There were a large number of Latin and Greek letter collections in circulation before 300. This is a reflection not only of the popularity of the genre, but also that letters were the principal means of communication across the empire. Hence, knowing how to write a letter that "fit the occasion of writing and relationship between sender and recipient" was a useful skill not only for elites. Any Roman might need to write a letter. Of course, one could always hire a professional letter writer, as Claudia Severa did, for example, when she was living in Britain and invited a female friend to her birthday celebration; in this case, Claudia may have also wanted to show off her literary skills since she wrote the postscript herself. Such mundane letters were not generally collected and published, but their survival shows that letter writing was widespread. A number of professions, ranging from secretary in a wealthy household or in the imperial government to scribe in the military or in a business, required the ability to write letters. And any writer might, at one time or another, be asked to prepare a letter collection, as, apparently, Cicero's secretary Tiro was.
Given its popularity and utility, it is little wonder, then, that letter writing came to be included as a subject in ancient schools. Young boys (most of those in school were male) were set to imitating model letters in their early years of schooling. As they advanced, students studied epistolary style, content, and formulae, generally under a rhetorician. Older students also learned prose composition and practiced oral presentations through specific written exercises (progymnasmata in Greek, praeexercitamina in Latin) that produced concise portraits of heroes, historical figures, or stock characters. Some of these portraits took the form of imaginary letters, and these, as has been suggested, likely fueled the publication of letters by fictitious figures and fictitious letters attributed to historical persons.
Several manuals on letter writing have survived, composed by teachers to assist their students. These, as Carol Poster has observed, offered "brief sketches of how students should select the correct model letters and stylistic registers from which to compose a letter." Some handbooks provided lists of types of letters and technical details such as length, addressee, and formulae appropriate for each type. Though several such treatises in Greek before 300 C.E. survive, the first extant Latin manual to discuss epistolary theory is by Julius Victor, a fourth-century rhetorician; the appendix (De epistolis) he added to his Ars rhetorica highlights what had become, by his day, the standard elements of letter writing. So, for instance, Victor makes the familiar distinction between public and private letters ("negotiales aut familiares," Ars rhetorica 27), and discusses tailoring styles to specific recipients: "A letter written to a superior should not be droll; to an equal, not cold; to an inferior not haughty." The conventions explain the formulae as well: "The openings and conclusions of letters should conform to the degree of friendship [you share with the recipient] or with his rank, and should be written according to customary practice."
From such texts, Heikki Koskienniemi isolated three important elements of epistolography, found in Greek and Latin handbooks and texts, that offer insight into the conventions adopted in private letters before and after 300: the concept of philophronensis, or the friendly disposition that lies at the heart of the letter exchange; the notion of parousia, or the ability of letters to bring friends separated physically into each other's presence; and the idea that letters allow a conversation or association between correspondents that creates a sense of community. In Latin, these three elements strongly emerge in Cicero's private letters; he learned these principles, most likely, as part of his Greek rhetorical training, since this generally included epistolary theory. Owing in no small part to the influence of Cicero's letters and to the widespread study of rhetoric across the empire, these elements of Greek private letter writing were integrated into Latin in the early empire and continued to be conventional in late antiquity.
ORGANIZING LATIN LETTER COLLECTIONS BEFORE 300 C.E.
As Christopher Jones rightly observes in this volume, there is a difference between "collection as a process, that is, the way in which letters were brought together into a single corpus," and collection as an end product, that is, "the corpus itself." Both the process and the finished corpus of letters varied considerably. In some instances, the author selected, edited, and circulated the collection, as Pliny did. But Pliny's letter collection may have undergone later additions, or so it seems likely to some scholars (including myself), who argue that his official correspondence found in book 10 was a posthumous addition (see below). Complicating matters is the fact that some authors disseminated multiple versions of individual letters and/or letter collections; Varro, for one, circulated individual books of letters at the same time that a larger collection was in circulation (see below). In other instances, the production of the collection was the result of choices made not by the letter writer but by subsequent editors and/or compilers. Friends, students, or admirers eager to produce a record of the letter writer could and did produce letter collections, as in the case of the letters of Cicero (see below) and those of the third-century north African bishop Cyprian (see below).
Unfortunately, the extant epistolary handbooks and discussions of epistolary theory do not detail the principles for ordering ancient letter collections. We must turn to the collections themselves for that information. On the basis of a survey of eleven Latin letter collections from the first through the fifth century, Roy Gibson has proposed that most prose Latin letter collections in antiquity were arranged either by addressee or by some loose topic, or by some combination of these two; and in any of these instances, letters could be arranged chronologically or not, depending on the aims of the editor. Alternatively, letters could be arranged to achieve greater thematic variation, as is seen, for instance, in Pliny's letters (see below). Gibson has argued that a strict, chronological ordering of prose letters reflects "a systematic interest in re-arranging letter collections [that] can be traced back at least to the mid-sixteenth century" and has continued to the present. Eight of the eleven letter collections that Gibson surveyed were so rearranged only after the sixteenth century.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
List of AbbreviationsIntroduction: 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