Roman letters : history from a personal point of view
What did the Romans say in their letters? How are their letters useful in understanding the ancient world? Addressing these and other questions, Finley Hooper and Matthew Schwartz have compiled a selection of letters from Cicero in the first century B.C. to Cassidorus in the sixth century A.D. The letters, sometimes surprising, occasionally amusing, but always impressive, provide new insights to Roman life. With sixteen chapters, notable Romans write about themselves and their times, and about personal and public matters. Seneca provides indignant remarks about the behavior of women in Nero's Rome. From his monastic cell in Bethlehem, St. Jerome berates St. Augustine for unkind gossip he may have spread. Some letters give a different perspective to history, while others talk of harvests, marriages, and day-to-day events. The authors have included running commentary for historical continuity as well as brief sketches on the men behind the letters. -- Amazon.com
Print Book, English, ©1991
Wayne State University Press, Detroit, ©1991
Criticism, interpretation, etc
338 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
9780814320228, 9780814320235, 0814320228, 0814320236
21196359
Cicero: private thoughts made public
Seneca: letters written for publication
Pliny the younger: gentleman and public servant
Lost letters found by archaeologists
Fronto: teacher of emperors
Cyprian: ruling the church the Roman way
Julian: loyal to the old gods
Gregory of Nyssa, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus: uncommon men with common interests
Ausonius and Paulinus: old friends gone separate ways. Symmachus or Ambrose: whose influence would prevail?
Jerome: struggling with himself, Satan, and others
Augustine: a giant of mind and faith
Synesius of Cyrene: the reluctant bishop
Sidonius Apollinaris: champion of a lost cause
Leo I: pope who faced Attila
Cassiodorus: writing letters for the Goths
Selected letters translated from the Greek and Latin