This is the first general introduction to Pliny's Letters published in any language, combining close readings with broader context and adopting a fresh and innovative approach to reading the letters as an artistically structured collection. Chapter 1 traces Pliny's autobiographical narrative throughout the Letters; Chapter 2 undertakes detailed study of Book 6 as an artistic entity; while Chapter 3 sets Pliny's letters within a Roman epistolographical tradition dominated by Cicero and Seneca. Chapters 4 to 7 study thematic letter cycles within the collection, including those on Pliny's famous country villas and his relationships with Pliny the Elder and Tacitus. The final chapter focuses on the 'grand design' which unifies and structures the collection. Four detailed appendices give invaluable historical and scholarly context, including a helpful timeline for Pliny's life and career, detailed bibliographical help on over 30 popular topics in Pliny's letters and a summary of the main characters mentioned in the Letters.

There exists a strong link in modern thinking between letter collections and biographical or historical narration. Many ancient letter collections have been rearranged by modern editors along chronological lines, apparently with the aim of realizing the biographical and historiographical potential of these ancient collections. In their original format, however, non-fictional Greco-Roman letter collections were arranged predominantly by addressee or by theme (often without the preservation of chronology within addressee or thematic groupings), or they might be arranged on the principle of artful variety and significant juxtaposition. Consequently, some purpose or purposes other than biographical or historical narration must be attributed to ancient letter collections. This paper asks what those purposes might be.

In the opening section of Ovid'sArs Amatoria3 the poet, in an attempt to gain favour with his female addressees, lists a number of legends where it is men who are the deceivers. In this list he includes Aeneas,et famam pietatis habet, tamen hospes et ensem I praebuit et causam mortis, Elissa, tuae(39–40). The terms in which Aeneas' guilt is cast are striking. Aeneas is criticized not for his lover's faithlessness, but for his shattering of the rules ofhospitium. At the heart ofhospitium, in as much as it is friendship between strangers, lay the ideals of duty, loyalty, reciprocity, and the exchange of services,pietas(39) includes, in this context, a reference to the guest's sense of, or actual fulfilment of, the duty to pay a proper return on the hospitality received. Aeneas had a reputation for doing his duty as ahospes, i.e. as someone who was conscientious about his duty to make an appropriate return. But, according to Ovid, the return which he actually made was diametrically opposed to a proper return, and consisted of a sword and a reason for Dido to kill herself with it. Ovid's decision to frame Aeneas' guilt in terms ofhospitiumreflects and emphasis adopted both in his own earlier epistle from Dido to Aeneas (Heroides7), and (what will concern us more) in theAeneiditself. The erotic relationship between Dido and Aeneas in Book 4 of theAeneidevolves out of thehospitiumrelationship established between them in Book 1. When Aeneas leaves Dido he asserts that their relationship is that of host and guest rather than of husband and wife, and that he has acted and will act well in thishospitiumrelationship (Aen.4.334–9). 9). Dido, for her part, even after she has been forced to drop the argument that she and Aeneas are married (Aen. 4.431), continues to attack Aeneas and the Trojans as bad or faithlesshospites(Aen.4.538–41, 4.596–8), and ends by renouncinghospitiumwith them (Aen.4.622–9).

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