The Letters of Alciphron: A Unified Literary Work? by Michèle Biraud Arnaud Zucker

220 PHOENIX a stimulating read, and the author is to be commended for writing in a clear and lucid prose that makes this highly informative book pleasant and entertaining as well. Alma Mater Studiorum – Lucia Floridi UniversitÁ a di Bologna The LETTERS of Alciphron: A Unified Literary Work? Ed. by MichÁ ele Biraud and Arnaud Zucker. Leiden and Boston: Brill (Mnemosyne Supplements 424). 2019. Pp. xvii, 275. One of a small number of fictional epistolary collections contemporaneous with the “Second Sophistic,” Alciphron’s Letters offer allusive vignettes of everyday life on the margins of classical and Hellenistic Athens, among fishermen, farmers, parasites, and courtesans; the letters themselves have been by and large confined to the margins of classical scholarship.1 This edited volume by its very existence raises the profile of a text that deserves the attention of readers interested in imperial Greek literature, ancient epistolary fiction (and ancient fiction in general), and the afterlife of classical and Hellenistic genres, including comedy, bucolic, and epigram. Nevertheless, the authors aim not primarily to read Alciphron’s Letters as exemplary of larger cultural trends (although they offer many such insights), but rather to make the case for Alciphron’s literary artistry. As set forth in the preface, this involves above all the question of unity and coherence amidst a multitude of narrative voices; the contention made by the authors of this volume—particularly in the first section (“Structural Perspectives”)—is that Alciphron’s collection of miniature prose letters resembles ancient poetry books in its deliberate and meaningful architecture. The search for structure, however, faces an apparent obstacle in the text’s tangled transmission—an issue addressed in the valuable opening chapters by Émeline Marquis (3–23) and Andrew Morrison (24–41). Marquis’s careful review of the manuscript tradition suggests that, although it is difficult to determine the original order of Alciphron’s books, the order of letters within each book is relatively stable across manuscript families. Informed by this insight, Morrison explores possible book-internal “micro-structural” patterns: while observing that chronological and narrative arrangements are rare, he uncovers different types of meaningful order, such as programmatic opening letters, ring composition, and thematic development across letters. Emilia Barbiero (42–58) dives deeper into Alciphron’s “micro-structure” in her close reading of the opening sequence of the Letters of Parasites (Alciphr. 3.1–7). Here, she draws attention to the juxtaposition of letters expressing hopes for the future with letters that look back to past disappointments. Barbiero suggests that this pattern of temporal oscillation resonates with Alciphron’s pessimistic portrayal of the parasites’ condition, and might further constitute a sophisticated reflection on the temporal complexity of epistolary literature. 1 On Alciphron’s epistolarity, see, for example, P. Rosenmeyer, Ancient Epistolary Fictions: The Letter in Greek Literature (Cambridge 2001) 255–307; J. König, “Alciphron’s Epistolarity,” in R. Morello and A. D. Morrison (eds.), Ancient Letters: Classical and Late Antique Epistolography (Oxford 2007) 257–282; O. Hodkinson, “Better than Speech: Some Advantages of the Letter in the Second Sophistic,” in Morello and Morrison, 283–300. For Alciphron in the context of the Second Sophistic, see T. Schmitz, “Alciphron’s Letters as a Sophistic Text,” in B. Borg (ed.), Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic (Berlin and New York 2004) 87–104. BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 221 Michèle Biraud (59–85) closes the section with a dense but rewarding examination of Alciphron’s use of stress-based rhythms. Focusing on the Letters of Fishermen, she argues that varying degrees of rhythmicity contribute to the organization of the book, while also corresponding to differences in the status of the letter writers and the types of discourse they employ (e.g., rhetorical persuasion vs. lyric expression). An intriguing implication of Biraud’s study is that Alciphron’s choice of the stress-based rhythm of contemporary speech, as opposed to the archaic quantitative rhythm, may have appealed to audiences beyond the highly educated elite. Altogether, the opening section is commendable for the degree of dialogue between the contributors, who successfully demonstrate the possibility and desirability of reading Alciphron’s books as carefully constructed units using different philological methodologies (textual criticism, close reading...

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