Hostname: page-component-54dcc4c588-rz4zl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-09-27T11:01:16.327Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Writing Imperial Space in Letters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2025

Catharine Edwards Open the ORCID record for Catharine Edwards [Opens in a new window]
Catharine Edwards*
Affiliation:
Historical Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, UK
*
Email: C.Edwards@bbk.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The fabric of the Roman empire was held together by a dense web of communications. Letters, often concerned with themes of connection and separation, played a significant role in the cultural construction of Roman imperial space. As material texts composed in one place and read in another perhaps far distant one, letters contributed to an understanding of imperial space articulated in terms of points on an itinerary, whose separation might be grasped in terms of time, as much as spatial distance. Strikingly ancient Roman letters almost never disclose an interest in the quality of places beyond Italy. Often letters work to efface the distance separating writer and addressee. In more formal letters little reference is made to distance, while letters between intimates frequently reflect on the capacity of this form of communication to transcend separation. What are the implications of this for conceptions of the empire’s space? Cicero’s letters are the primary focus of this discussion, which also touches on the letters of Seneca and Pliny and on Ovid’s exile poetry.

Keywords

epistolarityspatial networksCicero’s lettersempireseparation

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , First View , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Australasian Society for Classical Studies.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Adams, C. (2001), ‘“There and Back Again”: Getting Around in Roman Egypt’, in Adams and Laurence (2001), 138–166.Google Scholar
Adams, C. (2012), ‘Transport’, in Scheidel, W. (ed). The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy, 218–240.Google Scholar
Adams, C. (2016), ‘Migration in Roman Egypt: Problems and Possibilities’, in de Ligt and Tacoma (2016), 264–284.Google Scholar
Adams, C. and Laurence, R. (eds.) (2001), Travel and Geography in the Roman Empire. London and New York.Google Scholar
Altman, J. G. (1982), Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form. Columbus, OH.Google Scholar
Augé, M. (1995), Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, translated by John Howe, London.Google Scholar
Beard, M. (2002), ‘Ciceronian Correspondences: Making a Book out of Letters’, in Wiseman, (2002), 103–144.Google Scholar
Bekker-Nielsen, T. (ed.) (2006), Rome and the Black Sea Region: Domination, Romanisation, Resistance. Aarhus.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernard, J.-E. (2013), La sociabilité épistolaire chez Cicéron. Paris.Google Scholar
Brodersen, K. (2001), ‘The Presentation of Geographical Knowledge for Travel and Transport in the Roman World: itineraria non tantum adnotata sed etiam picta’, in Adams, and Laurence, (2001), 7–21.Google Scholar
Byrne, S. N. (1998), ‘Flattery and Inspiration: Cicero’s Epic for Caesar’, in Deroux, (1998), 129–137.Google Scholar
Cappello, O. (2016), ‘Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Atticus (But were Afraid to Ask Cicero): Looking for Atticus in Cicero’s Ad Atticum’, Arethusa 49.3: 463–487.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casson, L. (1974), Travel in the Ancient World. London.Google Scholar
Castells, M. (1996), The Rise of the Network Society. Cambridge MA.Google Scholar
Ceccarelli, P., Doering, L., Fogen, T., and Gildenhard, I. (eds.) (2018), Letters and Communities: Studies in the Socio-political Dimensions of Ancient Epistolography. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corcoran, S. (2014), ‘State Correspondence in the Roman Empire from Augustus to Justinian’, in Radner, (2014), 172–209.Google Scholar
Cotton, H. (1985), ‘Mirificum genus commendationis: Cicero and the Latin Letter of Recommendation’, American Journal of Philology 106: 328–334.Google Scholar
Cugusi, P. (1998), ‘L’epistola Ciceroniana: strumento di communicazione quotidiana e modello letterario’, Ciceroniana 10: 163–189.Google Scholar
Davisson, M. T. (1985), ‘Tristia 5.13 and Ovid’s use of Epistolary Form and Content’, Classical Journal 80: 238–246.Google Scholar
de Ligt, L. and Tacoma, L. (eds.) (2016), Migration and Mobility in the Early Roman Empire. Leiden.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Pretis, A. (2003), ‘“Insincerity”, “Facts” and “Epistolarity”: Approaches to Pliny’s Epistles to Calpurnia’, Arethusa 36.2: 127–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deroux, C. (ed.) (1998), Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History 9 (Collection Latomus 244). Brussels.Google Scholar
Edwards, C. (ed) (1999a), Roman Presences: Receptions of Rome in European Culture, 1789–1945. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Edwards, C. (1999b), ‘Translating Empire? Macaulay’s Rome’, in Edwards (1999a), 70–87.Google Scholar
Edwards, C. (2018b), ‘On Not Being in Rome: Exile and Displacement in Seneca’s Prose’, in Fitzgerald, and Spentzou, (2018), 169–194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, C. (2023), ‘Greetings from the Margin: Ovid’s Epistulae ex Ponto’, in Jackson, and Soldo, (2023), 68–84.Google Scholar
Edwards, C. (2018a), ‘Conversing with the Absent, Corresponding with the Dead: Friendship and Philosophical Community in Seneca’s Letters’, in Ceccarelli, et al. (2018), 325–351.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitzgerald, W. and Spentzou, E. (eds.) (2018), The Production of Space in Latin Literature. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gavoille, E. (2000), ‘La relation à l’absent dans les lettres de Cicéron à Atticus’, in Nadjo, and Gavoille, (2000) 153–176.Google Scholar
Gibson, R. (2020), Man of High Empire: The Life of Pliny the Younger. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, R. and Morello, R. (2012), Reading the Letters of Pliny the Younger: An Introduction. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gildenhard, I. (2017), ‘Space and Spin: Geopolitical Vistas in the 40s’, in Rimell, and Asper, (2017), 75–97.Google Scholar
Gildenhard, I. (2018) ‘A Republic in Letters’, in Ceccarelli, et al. (2018), 205–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gowers, E. (2011), ‘The Road to Sicily: Lucilius to Seneca’, Ramus 40.2: 168–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habinek, T. (1998), The Politics of Latin Literature: Writing, Identity and Empire in Ancient Rome. Princeton, NJ.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, C. (2012), Macaulay and Son: Architects of Empire. New Haven.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harvey, D. (1990), ‘Between Space and Time: Reflections on the Geographical Imagination’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 80: 418–434.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henderson, J. (2004), Morals and Villas in Seneca’s Letters. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henderson, J. (2007), ‘“…When Who Should Walk into the Room But …”: Epistolarity in Cicero, Ad Qfr. 3.1’, in Morello, and Morrison, (2007), 37–85.Google Scholar
Horden, P. and Purcell, N. (2000), The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History. Oxford.Google Scholar
Hulme, P. and Youngs, T. (eds.) (2002), The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunter, L. W. (1913), ‘Cicero’s Journey to his Province of Cilicia in 51 BC’, JRS 3, 73–97.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, G. (1998), Cicero’s Correspondence: A Literary Study. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Innis, H. (1950), Empire and Communications. Oxford.Google Scholar
Jackson, C. R. and Soldo, J. (eds.) (2023), Res vera, res ficta: Fictionality in Ancient Epistolography. Berlin.Google Scholar
Kolb, A. (2000), Transport und Nachrichtentransfer im römischen Reich. Berlin.Google Scholar
Kolb, A. (ed.) (2018), Literacy in Ancient Everyday Life. Berlin.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
König, A. and Whitton, C. (eds.) (2018), Roman Literature under Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian: Literary Interactions AD 96–138. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kruschwitz, P. (2014), ‘Gallic War Songs (II): Marcus Cicero, Quintus Cicero and Caesar’s Invasion of Britain’, Philologus 158 (2): 275–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lavan, M. (2018), ‘Pliny Epistles 10 and Imperial Correspondence’, in König, and Whitton, (2018), 280–301.Google Scholar
Leach, E.W. (2006) ‘An gravius aliquid scribam: Roman seniores Write to iuvenes’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 136.2: 247–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, M. (2018), ‘Gender, Geography and Genre: Catullus’ Constructions of Lesbia in Space and Time’, in Fitzgerald, and Spentzou, (2018), 120–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loar, M., MacDonald, C., and Padilla Peralta, D. (eds.) (2018), Rome, Empire of Plunder: The Dynamics of Cultural Appropriation. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Marchesi, I. (2008), The Art of Pliny’s Letters: A Poetics of Allusion in the Private Correspondence. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martelli, F. (2013), Ovid’s Revisions: The Editor as Author. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millar, F.G.B. (1977), The Emperor in the Roman World. London.Google Scholar
Millar, F. G. B. (2004a), Rome, the Greek World and the East: 2: Government, Society and Culture in the Roman Empire. Chapel Hill, NC.Google Scholar
Millar, F. G. B. (2004b), ‘Trajan: Government by Correspondence’, in Millar, (2004a), 23–46.Google Scholar
Morello, R. (2013), ‘Writer and Addressee in Cicero’s Letters’, in Steel, (2013), 196–214.Google Scholar
Morello, R. and Morrison, A. (eds.) (2007), Ancient Letters: Classical and Late Antique Epistolography. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrell, K. (2017), Pompey, Cato, and the Governance of the Roman Empire. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nadjo, L and Gavoille, E. (eds) (2000), Epistulae antiquae: Actes du Ier colloque: Le genre épistolaire antique et ses prolongements. Louvain and Paris.Google Scholar
Nicholson, J. (1994), ‘The Delivery and Confidentiality of Cicero’s Letters’, Classical Journal 90, 33–63.Google Scholar
Nicolet, C. (1991), Space, Geography, and Politics in the Early Roman Empire, trans Leclerc, H.. Ann Arbor, MI.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noreña, C. (2007), ‘The Social Economy of Pliny’s Correspondence with Trajan’, American Journal of Philology 128: 239–277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oliensis, E. (1997), ‘Return to Sender: The Rhetoric of nomina in Ovid’s Tristia’, Ramus 26.2: 172–193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Osgood, J. (2009), ‘The Pen and the Sword: Writing and Conquest in Caesar’s Gaul’, Classical Antiquity 28.2: 328–358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Padilla Peralta, D. (2018), ‘Circulation’s Thousand Connectivities’, in Loar, et al. (2018), 261–270.Google Scholar
Radil, S. and Walther, O. J. (2019), ‘Space and Social Networks: A Review of the Literature and Its Implications’, https://www.academia.edu/108175031/Social_networks_and_geography_a_view_from_the_periphery.Google Scholar
Radner, K. (ed.) (2014), State Correspondence in the Ancient World: From New Kingdom Egypt to the Roman Empire. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramsby, T. (2018), ‘Ovid as Ethnographer in the Epistulae ex Ponto’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 61, 2: 33–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rees, R. (2007), ‘Letters of Recommendation and the Rhetoric of Praise’, in Morello, and Morrison, (2007), 149–168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richardson, J. (1976), Roman Provincial Administration, 227 BC–AD 117. Basingstoke.Google Scholar
Richardson, J. (2008), The Language of Empire: Rome and the Idea of Empire from the Third Century BC to the Second Century AD. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Riggsby, A. (1995), ‘Pliny on Cicero and Oratory: Self-Fashioning in the Public Eye’, AJP 116: 123–135.Google Scholar
Riggsby, A. (2003), ‘Pliny in Space (and Time)’, Arethusa 36: 167–186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Riggsby, A. (2006), Caesar in Gaul and Rome: War in Words. Austin, TX.Google Scholar
Rimell, V. (2015), The Closure of Space in Roman Poetics: Empire’s Inward Turn. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rimell, V. and Asper, M. (eds.) (2017), Imagining Empire: Political Space in Hellenistic and Roman Literature. Heidelberg.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rood, T. (2012), ‘Black Sea Variations: Arrian’s Periplus’, Cambridge Classical Journal 57: 137–163.Google Scholar
Rossi, O. (2010), Letters from Far Away: Ancient Epistolary Travel Writing and the Case of Cicero’s Correspondence (PhD diss., Yale).Google Scholar
Salway, B. (2001), ‘Travel, itineraria and tabellaria’, in Adams, and Laurence, (2001), 22–66.Google Scholar
Salway, B. (2004), ‘Sea and River Travel’, in Talbert, and Brodersen, (2004), 43–96.Google Scholar
Schröder, B.-J. (2018), ‘Couriers and Conventions in Cicero’s Epistolary Network’, in Ceccarelli, et al. (2018), 81–101.Google Scholar
Shackleton Bailey, D. R. (1965–70), Cicero’s Letters to Atticus, 7 vols. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Soler, J. (2005), Écritures du voyage: héritages et inventions dans la littérature latine tardive. Paris.Google Scholar
Speidel, M. (2018), ‘Soldiers and Documents: Insights from Nubia: The Significance of Written Documents in Roman Soldiers, in Kolb, (2018), 179–200.Google Scholar
Steel, C. (2001), Cicero, Rhetoric and Empire. Oxford.Google Scholar
Steel, C. (ed.) (2013), The Cambridge Companion to Cicero. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Syme, R. (1985), ‘The Dating of Pliny’s Latest Letters’, CQ 35: 176–185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Talbert, R. and Brodersen, K. (eds.) (2004), Space in the Roman World. Münster.Google Scholar
Trapp, M. (ed.) (2003), Greek and Latin Letters: An Anthology, with Translation. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Trevelyan, G. O. (1908), The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay. London.Google Scholar
Vance, N. and Wallace, J. (eds.) (2015), The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, vol. 4. Oxford.Google Scholar
Vasunia, P. (2015), ‘Barbarism and Civilisation: Political Writing, History and Empire’, in Vance, and Wallace, (2015) 131–158.Google Scholar
White, P. (2010), Cicero in Letters: Epistolary Relations of the Late Republic. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, G. D. (1994), Banished Voices: Readings in Ovid’s Exile Poetry. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Wiseman, T. P. (ed.) (2002), Classics in Progress. Oxford.Google Scholar
Woolf, G. (2006), ‘Pliny’s Province’, in Bekker-Nielsen, (2006), 93–108.Google Scholar
Woolf, G. (2015), ‘Pliny/Trajan and the Poetics of Empire’, Classical Philology 110: 132–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar