Love letter, novel, Alciphron and 'Chion'

Abstract

Letters may be real (written by and to the living) or imaginary (exchanged between the fictional, mythological or dead). Imaginary letters, if only from their birth as works of fiction, but also some real letters, by their content or their style, are 'literary' and exemplify the literary genre of epistolography or letter-writing. It flourished supremely as an art form in Byzantium, continued in the letters of Petrarch and Erasmus — whose De Conscribendis Epistulis repeats the classic teaching — and emerges, in one of its rarer ancient guises, in the modern epistolary novel. This short paper offers a summary account — by way of introduction to an unfamiliar genre — of (a) the Greek love letter (as exemplified by Alciphron) and (b) (anticipating Humphrey Clinker and Clarissa) the novel in letters of 'Chion of Heraclea'. Exigencies of space compel economy of reference: accordingly, there is only passing mention of other Greek epistolographers.1 Epistolary principles were laid down by Deme trius (1) and (2)2 and (following Philostratus)3 by Proclus,4 who classify letters, with brief models of their types (as 'informative', 'recommendatory', 'consolatory', 'of censure') and desiderate in them, as basic elements of style, brevity, clarity, and gracefulness (.syntomia, sapheneia, charis). Their detailed prescriptions are observed throughout antiquity, in both real and imaginary letters: the latter, however, vary much in strictness of adherence, and the two extremes are Alciphron and 'Chion'. Alciphron, in the second or third century a.d., wrote four books of imaginary letters. They purport to be written, in the language of the period, by fishermen, farmers, parasites and courtesans of the Attica and Athens of Menander. Their one concession to epistolary form is the curt prescript, addressed by a male or female character (who is commonly significantly named) to a putative (also aptly named) addressee: thus (for example) 'Naubates to Rhothius' (two fishermen), 'Amnion to Philomoschus' (both farmers). Names may, however, be real and/or historical (Pratinas and Epigonus are players on the syrinx), and these are prevalent in the letters of the courtesans (Phryne to Praxiteles, Glycera to Menander). The fictional exchange between Menander and Glycera (IV 18, 19)5 exemplifies the erotike [epistole], in which (says Proclus, 19.4) 'we