The "Letters" of Alciphron (second century CE) constitute one of the most attractive products of the Second Sophistic. They are fictitious compositions based on an astonishingly wide variety of circumstances, though the theme of erotic love is constantly sounded. The imagination shown by the author and his convincing realism win him a place of distinction in the early development of romantic prose. The letters, which are highly literary, owing much to the New Comedy of Menander, purport to give us a sketch of the social life of Athens in the fourth century BCE. The collection is arranged in four divisions: Letters of Fishermen; Farmers; Parasites; Courtesans. Senders and addressees are mostly invented characters, but in the last section Alciphron presents us with several attempts at historical fiction, the most engaging being an exchange of letters between Menander and Glycera.

This volume also includes twenty "Letters of Farmers" ascribed to Aelian ("c."170-235 CE) and a collection of seventy-three "Erotic Epistles" of Philostratus (probably Flavius of that name, also born "c." 170 CE). In style and subject matter these resemble those of Alciphron, by whom they may have been influenced.

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This book has been written from the conviction that general statements about the philosophical position taken by Theophrastus in this small but extremely difficult treatise, can only be made on the basis of a detailed interpretation of each and every sentence of the text. This resulted in a full commentary, which evades no philological or philosophical question that should be asked in order to elicit from the text a maximum of information. The outcome is a cautious but nonetheless explicit and determinate characterization and evaluation of Theophrastean metaphysics as a biologist's metaphysics, which deserves the attention of philosophers in its own right.
The author has paid special attention to questions of Peripatetic idiom and terminology, thus increasing the value of this book to students of Peripatetic thought in general. The information brought together has been made easily accessible by full indexes.

This book has been written from the conviction that general statements about the philosophical position taken by Theophrastus in this small but extremely difficult treatise, can only be made on the basis of a detailed interpretation of each and every sentence of the text. This resulted in a full commentary, which evades no philological or philosophical question that should be asked in order to elicit from the text a maximum of information. The outcome is a cautious but nonetheless explicit and determinate characterization and evaluation of Theophrastean metaphysics as a biologist's metaphysics, which deserves the attention of philosophers in its own right.
The author has paid special attention to questions of Peripatetic idiom and terminology, thus increasing the value of this book to students of Peripatetic thought in general. The information brought together has been made easily accessible by full indexes.