An Archaeology of Cicero's Letters: A Study of Late Republican Textual Culture
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This dissertation examines the hermeneutic role of the material epistula in the correspondence of the Roman elite at the end of the Republic. Through close readings of descriptions of the physical letter in Cicero’s Letters and with reference to the papyrological record and later epistolary cultures, I reconstruct the meaning of the material epistula for Cicero and his social cohort. Elite epistolography was not only a site of intricate discursive strategies, but also of complex material politics. Physical aspects of the epistula – such as whose handwriting (the author’s or a scribe’s) the recipient reads, the choice of medium for the epistle, and the identity of the letter-carrier – constituted a complex social performance on the part of the epistolographer that helped to delineate both his status in the community and his relationship with the letter’s addressee. By examining how the material form of an epistula could influence the reception of its linguistic contents, this dissertation also facilitates a more nuanced understanding of Cicero’s correspondence, in particular his epistolary relations with such figures as Atticus, Caelius, Plancus, and Antony. The first two chapters demonstrate that the mode of production for an epistula was a key material feature that republican epistolographers used in constructing and negotiating their relationships with each other. This investigation also shows how republican epistolography functioned as a symbolic economy, which covertly interacted with the commercial economy. The third chapter examines Atticus’ handwriting practices in his correspondence with Cicero as a means to engage in a larger discussion regarding Atticus’ place and function in Roman elite society. The fourth chapter examines the cultural genealogy and larger social perception of wax-tablets and papyrus (the two forms of media for republican epistolography) in order to better appreciate why Roman epistolographers would employ each medium in particular epistolary transactions. Chapter five explores how Cicero and his correspondents deployed particular letter-carriers to affect the reception of a letter. Finally, the conclusion briefly examines the letter-writing practices of the epistolographers from the Roman fort at Vindolanda in order to review the findings of this dissertation, while also suggesting avenues for future research.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.015 | 0.011 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".