What do (Cicero’s) letters count as evidence for?

• Andrew Riggsby ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Texas at Austin

     University of Texas at Austin

     Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Hermathena, ISSN 0018-0750, Nº. 202-203, 2017 (Ejemplar dedicado a: The epistolary Cicero: further readings in the Letters), págs. 265-284
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This paper offers methodological reflections on the use of letters as evidence for phenomena extrinsic to themselves. Consideration of questions for which letters count as primary evidence is valuable, but it does not allow full separation of those questions from the internal ‘literary’ features of the letters. When letters are used as secondary evidence, questions of their audience are unavoidable and must be explicitly addressed by modern interpreters. The size of our epistolographic corpora lend themselves to computer-assisted research, but in ways that are distinct from larger data sets.