Preface 1. Greek Letters: an introduction - The form and function of the Greek letter, Writing and sending, The materials of letter writing, Ancient theory and practice - teaching and learning, The sources of letters - 2. Personal and Family Letters 3. Business Letters 4. Letters of State 5. The Letter as Tract 6. Greek Letters in the Early Christian Church 7. Letters in Greek Literature Notes. List of abbreviations. Dates in the papyrus letters. Map - Egypt and "The Fayyum". Collection of papyri and ostraca referred to in the text. Bibliography of works cited. Index
Biography
John Muir
‘After a handy introduction … Muir guides his reader round each kind of letter in turn in a sequence of carefully shaped chapters, moving sure-footedly between vivid particulars and illuminating generalisation, with a particularly sharp eye for the varied ways in which Hellenism expresses itself in epistolary form. The greatest delight of this book however, is the generous quantity of elegantly translated quotation with which chapter is enriched, allowing the reader his or her own direct contact with the letters and their writers and worlds … It is impossible not to be hooked by one or another of this extraordinarily varied gallery of perspectives, if not by all of them in turn.’ – The Anglo-Hellenic Review
