Epistulae

The two volumes offer the first critical edition of the entire letter-collection of Michael Psellos; a total of 563 texts, including spuria, rewritings, and excerpts. Psellos (11th c., Constantinople) is a well-known figure among students of Byzantine culture and arguably the most prolific and influential middle Byzantine learned author. His letter-collection, preserved in 53 Byzantine and post-Byzantine manuscripts, grants us glimpses into the lives of well-known but also everyday Byzantines, sheding light upon Constantinopolitan networks of friendship and power and, more importantly, upon habits of rhetorical craftsmanship, literary imagination, and typologies of self.

Stratis Papaioannou, University of Crete, Rethymnon, Greece.