Ancient Letter Collections

The letter collections of Greco-Roman antiquity dwarf in total size all of ancient drama or ancient epic put together. Yet, unlike epic or drama, they have little visibility as a distinctive area of study. This is due in large part to the fact that no one definitively knows - because no one has thought to ask - how many letter collections actually survive from antiquity. This project will establish for the first time how many such collections survive. More significantly, through diachronic critical review of each collection to survive from the fourth century B.C. to the fifth century A.D., the project sets itself the task of establishing the study of ancient letter collections as a discrete and unified field. Included in that survey are numerous foundational texts of ancient literature and thought, from the letter collections of Plato through those of Cicero and the Christian New Testament to Saint Augustine's collections in later antiquity. From this survey it will emerge that - like ancient drama or epic - there is significant generic unity across time, above all in terms of formal features, despite differences in content and focus between individual texts.

Alongside the creation of a field of study, it is an important part of this project to establish how ancient letter collections were ordered and read. A good number of surviving ancient letter collections - perhaps the majority - are available only in standard modern editions which have abandoned the distinctive ordering that is found in the ancient manuscripts of these collections. For example, Cicero's Letters to Friends show a particular ordering by addressee or theme in all ancient manuscripts; but modern editors have re-ordered these letters entirely by chronology, thus obliterating the format in which the letters were read for first 1,500 years of their history. By seeking to establish how each letter collection to survive from antiquity was originally arranged in its manuscript form, we aim to recover, and promote the importance of, distinctively ancient reading practices in relation to letter collections.

This is a project whose main beneficiaries are academic (although unusually wide in number and type): but, we are acutely aware of a large potential audience in several sections of the general public. These include:
(i) Schools, local and national: Letters from significant ancient letter collections form part of the A-level syllabus: Pliny's letters are one of the texts studied in the OCR Classics & Classical Civilisation A-levels, Cicero's letters part of the OCR Ancient History A-level. We will build on this existing interest in and study of ancient letters by offering schools talks on the letters of Pliny and Cicero (given by the PI in yr 2 of the project), focusing on the ways in which the place of the individual letter within its collection affects the ways that letter (and the collection) should be read. We will write two popular articles accessible to a school audience (co-authored by PI & CI in yr 3) on ancient letter collections and their significance, one each to be offered to the popular magazine Omnibus (published by the Classical Association, and distributed to schools across the country) and the online magazine Iris, published by the Iris Project, a charity whose mission is to introduce the languages and culture of the ancient world to UK state schools in order to enrich the curriculum.
(ii) Local community in Manchester & the North-West: In order to publicise our project and its findings to this large potential audience we will organize two public lectures on ancient letter collections and their arrangements (to be given by the PI & CI in yr 4 of the project), to be delivered in association with the Manchester branch of the Classical Association (Manchester CA: see http://www.manchesterca.org.uk/), the main charitable organization promoting the study of the classical world in the North-West of England, and to take place at the University of Manchester. The Manchester branch of the CA is part of the Classical Association (http://www.classicalassociation.org/, the leading Classics charity in the UK, devoted to increasing public awareness of the contribution and importance of classics to education and public life. We will use our links with these associations (the PI is currently the Chair of the national CA Council) and with the Societies for the Promotion of Hellenic and Roman Studies (http://www.hellenicsociety.org.uk/, http://www.romansociety.org/) to publicise the lectures. In addition there are opportunities for knowledge transfer activities such as an exhibition at the Rylands (see (iii) below). The PDRA will also write a popular article (in yr 4) describing the project, its aims and significance in the Manchester-based Classics magazine, Mamucium, which is run by University of Manchester students and distributed to colleges across Greater Manchester.
(iii) Third sector (museums/libraries): we are aware of the need to respond flexibly to the needs of various and different audiences as the project develops, and have already begun discussion with the John Rylands Library, Deansgate with regard to possible activities to support and promote the public lectures (see (ii) above). Opportunities include an exhibition or facilitated interpretation event such as a workshop, making use of (for example) some of the impressive collection of manuscripts and early printed editions of letter-collections (including Cicero) held at the Rylands.The John Rylands Library is one of the most important visitor attractions in North-West England, and an event attached to our lectures would help generate interest in its holdings and continue to attract visitors to the library.
(iv) Wider public: We will address this broad audience through monthly blog posts by the CI throughout the project on the findings of the project. Readers will be able to respond to the posts. The PI, CI & PDRA will also regularly create, update and edit Wikipedia entries on various epistolographers as they are covered by the project.