Epistularum Graecarum Initia usque ad annum MD

This work is both an update of the "Epistularum Byzantinarum Initia" (2001) and an extension of it to examine the whole of Greek literary letters (including Classical and Hellenistic Greek) up to the year 1500. In the last 15 years new editions of letters have appeared and further collections of manuscripts have been uncovered. The inclusion of letters from before 300 AD makes provision for the transmission of the sources, since these are often to be found together with Byzantine epistolographic texts in manuscript collections. This shows the interest of contemporaries while at the same time emphasising the further development and the flourishing of letter-writing in the Byzantine age. The systematic recording also makes it possible to develop new questions about epistolary rhetoric, especially about the forms used to open letters. The work contains around 17,500 elements and at the same time provides an up-to-date compendium of Greek letter-writers from classical times to the late middle ages.