...This chapter introduces the reader to the book as a whole. The volume establishes a few basic starting points for interpreting late antique letters and letter collections. First, it rejects the letter/epistle dichotomy established by Adolf Deissmann in the early 20^th century in favor...

...This chapter offers the reader advice on what to expect from and how make the most of this book. Each chapter is designed to straddle an encyclopedic presentation of the textual and material history of individual letter collections, and an interpretive argument about the way(s) that each collection...

...This volume provides the first comprehensive overview of the extant Greek and Latin letter collections of late antiquity (ca. 300-600 c.e.). Bringing together an international team of historians, classicists, and scholars of religion, it illustrates how letter collections advertised...