This excellent volume sheds light on ancient erotic epistolography through new approaches. Knowledge and research on this particular literary genre has always faced several difficulties for various reasons. The editors of this volume identify and examine in the first place the combination of facts and phenomena that have traditionally neglected these literary texts, an important and necessary step for proper research. This project aims to answer questions about the genre and the relationships between different aspects, such as Greek and Latin “love letters”; literary models, theoretical prescriptions, and real-life practices; ancient and modern concepts of ‘erôs’ and ‘amor’, and their modes of expression in different contexts. The implications of these questions for defining the love letter genre are also raised. Through this innovative approach to love letters, A. T. Drago and O. Hodkinson propose the breaking down of boundaries between languages, eras, genres, theoretical texts, literary and real documents.

The first section of the book, “The ‘Grammar’ of the Epistolary Genre: Structural Perspectives”, consists of four papers. In the first chapter, “Greco-Roman Love Letters and Modern Genre Theory”, I. Nilsson presents recent ideas from modern genre theory to provide a more complete definition of this literary genre. Although letters are a basic form of communication, their definition can be complicated. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to answer some questions, such as what is a genre or a letter. Nilsson shows that a modern approach to both genre and letters may help to understand ancient epistolarity. In the second chapter (“Mapping Some of the Generic Borders of the Greek Love Letter”), R. J. Gallé Cejudo demonstrates that the origins of this widely disseminated genre in the Imperial period can be found among other emblematic genres especially from the Hellenistic period, such as the epigram, the idyll, and the erotic tale. During this period, there was a process of generic hybridisation or cross-over. The authors of the main collections of Greek love letters follow the rhetorical scholastic tradition and the epistolary treatises. However, their results are innovative because they employ different literary strategies and compositional techniques. Gallé Cejudo also provides a useful overview of literary motifs in the Greek love letter, and the different treatments of a theme in the main collections. P. A. Rosenmeyer’s paper, “The Body and the Letter”, focuses on exploring the physical presence of the body in Latin letters, both metonymically and synecdochally, as well as its absence. Rosenmeyer distinguishes between the ways in which letters evoke physical presence and offers some of the narrative strategies associated with identifying the physical body with the epistolary text. In “Letters before Letters”, E. Bowie explores the origins of the ‘love letter’ in poems or songs from the Archaic and Classic periods, using examples from Archilochus, Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon, Theognis, and Pindar. Songs imagining a fictitious addressee and/or situation may reflect songs predicated on a real addressee and/or situation, and Bowie shows that some songs dedicated to remote addresses, who would only receive that address through intermediaries, can be considered as proto-letters.

The second part of the book contains five papers dedicated to “Intertextuality: Literary Models, Topoi, Conventions, Imitative Strategies”. A. D. Morrison’s chapter, “Lookin’ for Love (in Plato’s Epistles)”, focuses on the Platonic exploration of love in the 1-13 collection of letters. The order in which the letters are read is relevant to understanding the extent and degree of the eroticising of the correspondents. The collection, in its 1-13 sequence, emphasises the importance of Plato’s eroticised personal relationships. Morrison’s innovative research examines the use of erotic themes and concepts in the rest of the Platonic corpus and their reflection in the letters. It also explores how readers of the Epistles have interpreted the erotic connections. In “The Structure and Ordering of the Philostratean Love Letters”, although it is impossible to reconstruct the original arrangement, A. Pontoropoulos proposes an approach based on thematic interconnections between narrative segments and motifs. He identifies nine main thematic groups or clusters and traces interconnections between them. Some of these connections indicate that the first three epistles are opening programmatic letters, modelled on Hellenistic programmatic epigrams; moreover, Letter 73 can be considered as a concluding letter due to its similarities and interconnections with the rest of the epistles. In the chapter “Hyperliterarity, Intertextuality and Formalized Erotic Language. The Letters of Aristaenetus”, A. T. Drago examines the presence of literary sources in the Letters of Aristaenetus. She distinguishes different forms of allusiveness hierarchically. This essay is particularly interesting because it identifies which texts are alluded to in the letters and how these sources are inserted into the letters. Aristaenetus quotes or imitates the literary tradition but treats it with distance, crossing it with subtle irony and irreverence. The Letters reuse conventional erotic motifs from various sources, including archaic Greek lyric poetry, classical tragedy, ancient and new comedy, Platonic dialogues on love, the Argonautica and romances. However, it is important to note that the presence of tradition takes different forms, and Aristaenetus’ ability to innovate must be emphasised. Drago reconsiders the question of the conscious use of the Old and New Comedy and argues strongly that Aristaenetus recreates traditional literary motifs from comedy while also parodying tradition itself. In chapter eight, “Philostratus’ Erotic Epistles and Latin Elegy Revisited”, O. Hodkinson argues that Philostratus alludes to Roman Elegy in some of the Erotic Epistles. Hodkinson provides arguments that suggest Philostratus had knowledge of Latin literature and incorporated it into his Epistles. Hodkinson presents three instances of possible allusion to Latin elegiac texts in the Epistles. If this possibility is accepted, there may be additional parallels that allude to Latin literature. In the next essay, “Sealed with a Curse: Elegy, Epistolography, and Magic Ritual in Ovid Heroides 6”, Z. Chadha argues that Ovid’s Heroides 6, the letter of Hypsipyle, must be read as a magic ritual in the form of an elegiac love letter. Chadha explores various literary connections and also suggests the literary adaptation of ‘prayers for justice’ and diabolaí (slander-spells) found on curse tablets and in the PGM.

The last section, “Cultural Issues and Backgrounds”, includes four papers. The essay by É. Marquis, “Alciphron: The Erotic Letters in the Spotlight”, delimits the corpus of ‘erotic letters’ in the four books of Alciphron. The study of their main features reveals important data about their arrangement in the collection. The interconnections between these erotic letters, through echoes and parallels within each book and also between them, bring to light an underlying organisation that gives cohesion to the whole corpus. M. Funkes’s “Epistolarity, Eroticism, and Agency: The Female Voice in Fictional Greek Love Letters” reflects on the expression of female subjectivity in the epistolary genre and considers it as a key feature of love letters. She analyses the connection between women’s voices and agency through examples from Ovid’s Heroides, Leucippe’s letter to Clitophon in Achiles Tatius’ novel, and Alciphron’s letters from courtesans to their clients or lovers. S. D. Smith’s chapter, “Is Diogenes in Love with a Eunuch? The Destabilising Power of Erōs in the Letters of Theophylact Simocatta” focuses on the latent erotic content of a moral epistle, Theophylact’s Epistle 43. Smith analyses the thirteen semantic units of this letter using R. Barthes' method, which identifies three semiotic themes: rhetorical antithesis, castration, and economics. He explains the significance of the eunuch as a figure for erotic epistolarity: it is not just a literary variation or part of the economic theme, but the eunuch serves as a metaliterary semiotic figure for the genre of the love letter itself. “In a Sentimental Mood? Love, Sex, Marriage (and Other Catastrophes) in Personal Letters (and Everyday Documents) from Graeco-Roman Egypt” is a fascinating study of real love or erotic letters. L. Del Corso explores their development and importance in understanding the social and cultural history of Hellenistic and Roman Egypt. He provides a comprehensive overview of the content, language, and style of several extant letters, along with a helpful appendix of Greek papyrus letters and translations. The analysis reveals two main features that characterise the communicative status of real love letters: the ‘pretence of orality’ and the ‘autography’.

The indexes at the end of the volume (nominum, rerum and locorum) will assist readers in finding particular topics and passages. A unified bibliography at the end of the volume is also very useful. The contributions in this volume are novel, attractive, and relevant, representing a significant advance in the knowledge, approach, and treatment of these literary texts. This first volume of the project proposes productive interdisciplinary approaches and discussions necessary to understand and study the love letters in antiquity and beyond. Therefore, we look forward to the next phases of this project and its gradual revelation of the definition, nature and features, development, literary and ‘real’ corpus, intertextuality, genres, models, contexts, and reception of ancient love letters.