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Reviews 279 f o r children born after his death, since his wife was 'certainly not pregnant', but this is followed by the entry, 'et si esset vel non esset, n i h i l vult dicere'. In Will 38 Herini Venerio gives a silver belt to the notary Andrea Brexiano to compensate him for what might have been an unregistered loan, 'pro aliquibus denariis quos sibi accipi inlicite'. In Will 21, it is stated that the slave Eudocia, w h o had been bought for 26 hyperpyra, m a y be sold back to her family lor 20 hyperpyra (a depreciation of c.15.5% over an unknown period; the unusual arrangement suggests that she had not been in the service of the family for long). Such inclusions give an occasional touch of h u m a n interest to this collection of documents. John Melville-Jones Department of Classics and Ancient History The University of Western Australia Mullett, Margaret, Theophylact of Ochrid: Reading the Letters of a Byzantine Archbishop, Aldershot, Ashgate, 1997; cloth; pp. xviii, 462; 7 figures, 4 plates, 2 maps; R.R.P. £49.50. This reading of the letter collection of Theophylact of Ochrid, Byzantine archbishop of Ochrid in Bulgaria in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, uses a variety of approaches in order to characterise a work which is both a literary artefact in a long Greek tradition and unique evidence for a complex Byzantine network of friends, colleagues, patrons and clients. Theophylact, previously 'master of the rhetoricians' in Constantinople, was appointed to Ochrid c. 1088 and controlled a vast diocese; his 135 letters to friends, colleagues, pupils and family, which were published and translated by Paul Gautier in 1986, date from c. 1080-e. 1108. The letters have previously been quarried by historians for details of 280 Reviews local economic and ecclesiastical history, relations with the Slavs, and events such as the arrival of the First Crusade, but they have not hitherto been studied as a example of Byzantine letter-writing or as an illustration of a network of contacts in action. Dr Mullett's focus in this volume is on the social editing of discourse in Theophylact's letters, and the issues of genre, network-analysis, and communication, rather than intertextuality with other authors and the place of Theophylact's letter-collection within Byzantine and world literature. Theophylact's letter-collection is one of 150 major Byzantine letter collections, which comprise some 15,000 letters in total. Mullett's discussion of genre and milieu in Chapter Two, highlighting the formality of Byzantine letters, their deliberately public intimacy, and the lack of actual information included in them, is therefore very useful for the Byzantine scholar generally, as is the information on the gifts which accompanied letters, the importance of the bearer, and the degree of orality implicit in the reception of Byzantine letters, which were frequently read aloud to a circle of friends. It has long been noted that Byzantine letters generally avoid conveying any specific information on personalities or events and exist in atimelessclassical landscape. Theophylact's letters conform to this convention, his famous reference to the passing of the First Crusade through his archdiocese being mentioned in only one letter (Gautier, 52) and then only as an excuse to his correspondent for not writing earlier, though it is noted that Theophylact does mention events more than other epistolographers, albeit in an elaborate and allusive style. In Chapter Three Mullett attempts to date and organise the collection and analyses the ways in which Theophylact arranged his letters, their principle concerns, and h o w they were written. Grand affairs of state m a k e a rare appearance: the letters are Reviews 281 typically concerned with books and literary recommendations, illness and medicine, complaints on Theophylact's 'exile', and the perennial themes of friendship and separation, all conveyed through a haze of oblique references and classical allusions. Everyday matters, however, do also present themselves: Theophylact speaks of his problems with the locals, his bishops, officials, and the taxation department. In addition, the recipient is told of personal details, such as the illness and death of Theophylact's brother, Theophylact's o...

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