Title Cicero in letters : epistolary relations of the late republic / Peter White

Published New York : Oxford University Press, 2010

Click on the following:
Oxford Scholarship Online

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xii, 235 pages) Contents Part I. Reading the Letters from the Outside In. Constraints and Biases in Roman Letter Writing ; The Editing of the Collection ; Frames of the Letter -- Part II. Epistolary Preoccupations. The Letters and Literature ; Giving and Getting Advice by Letter ; Letter Writing and Leadership -- Afterword : The Collection in Hindsight -- Appendix 1: Quantifying the Letter Corpus -- Appendix 2: Contemporary Works Mentioned in the Letters Summary This book is a guide to the first large letter collection that survives from the Greco-Roman world. The correspondence of Cicero consists of nearly 950 letters and embraces almost every major political figure of the Late Republic. Chapters 1 through 3 of this study describe external constraints affecting the letters that have come down to us. Some were the result of Roman conventions regarding social interaction, while others reflect logistical difficulties of long-distance communication. Another series of constraints on the way letters were written arose from generic expectations about epistolary form. In addition, an editor helped to shape the published collection by imposing criteria of selection and arrangement that favored certain categories of subject matter and correspondent over others. Chapters 4 through 6 turn from the context of the letters to their content, and discuss three of Cicero's most characteristic epistolary preoccupations. It shows how, in a time of deepening crisis, he and his correspondents drew on a common literary background, on the habit of exchanging advice, and on a rhetoric of leadership in an effort to improve cooperation and to maintain the political culture which they shared Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and indexes Notes Print version record Subject Cicero, Marcus Tullius -- Correspondence Cicero, Marcus Tullius -- Contemporaries -- Correspondence SUBJECT Cicero, Marcus Tullius fast Subject Latin letters -- History and criticism Statesmen -- Rome -- Correspondence -- History and criticism Letter writing, Latin -- History -- To 1500 FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDY -- Latin. Contemporaries Latin letters Letter writing, Latin Statesmen -- Correspondence Rome (Empire) Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. History Personal correspondence Form Electronic book ISBN 9780199750573 0199750572 9780199866717 0199866716

  Permalink