Material Aspects of Letter Writing in the Graeco-Roman World, 500 BC – AD 300

Ancient letters had formatting and stylistic conventions that were carefully respected by their writers. This book provides the first comprehensive study of these conventions based on a wide corpus of letters surviving on their original material substrates primarily from Graeco-Roman Egypt. It elucidates and contextualises the impact of sociocultural phenomena on stylistic variations over a long period in the history ofepistolary practice.