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This papyrus, the tattered remains (about 1,000 letters) of an elegant roll, was edited by C. H. Roberts in vol. xviii of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, published in 1941. Out of a total of fifty-three fragments he located twenty-nine; the twenty-four which he left unlocated are mere scraps, averaging six-and-a-half letters (maximum twelve, minimum two), with about a third of their letters represented by ambiguous and sometimes minimal remains. This chapter summarizes the following: (a) hitherto unknown, and possibly true: 524, 528; (b) hitherto unknown, and evidently false: 109, 438; (c) agreeing with a true variant against a false: 294, 461, 525; (d) agreeing with the medieval tradition in a reading which is commonly corrected: 200.

This chapter examines papyrus letters, with emphasis on private letters and their relationship with literature. The role of critical analysis in understanding the link between papyrus private letters and literature are discussed by citing the Greek document The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 2190, a letter from a student to his father dating from around AD 100. The document clearly has a pragmatic function, which must be related to its form; and, as with oratory, any persuasive shaping of the text would scarcely be separable from the text itself. Two approaches can be envisaged from the letter with respect to critical analysis. First, then, the category of literature could be conceived in institutional terms: one might try distinguishing, say, between writing essentially for one reader and writing for readers or listeners beyond one's immediate circle. The second approach, which should be added, would look beyond an institutional division.

This chapter examines Alciphron's Letters, which portray a world of longing and loss, a world of fragile happiness and comic disillusionment. There are four books: Letters from Fishermen, Farmers, Parasites, and Courtesans. Each of those four groups reveals through its letters its own desires and sufferings, its own extravagant dreams and bathetic failures. Two themes (as far as they can be separated) are particularly prominent: precarious or failed aspiration to material gain, love, or physical comfort; and precarious or failed aspiration to social advancement or role-swapping. The second of those preoccupations leads to an impression of interconnection between the different parts of the work, in the many letters where characters express their desire to cross from membership of one group to another. The unrealistic character of the characters' dreams is matched by the inaccessibility and unreality of Alciphron's world for its readers. This chapter asks how far the text's epistolary form works to intensify its thematic obsessions, with a particular emphasis on formal issues using the work of Janet Altman as a starting-point.

This chapter analyses Oxyrhynchus Papyri 2256 fr. 3, a subject of controversy among scholars. It compares the fragment with fr. 2, noting a number of resemblances. Probably written in the late second or early third century ad, the work could be the didascalia of a play of Aeschylus. The last few lines were corrupted, yet the information contained in the second to fourth lines is very clear and straightforward and implies that Aeschylus defeated Sophocles. The chapter also considers attempts to determine whether another interpretation of the papyrus is plausible, or even possible. It cites the argument that the Supplices does not belong to the same tetralogy as the Danaids and Amymone.