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Sympathetic Rivals: Consolation in Cicero's Letters
- American Journal of Philology
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 126, Number 2 (Whole Number 502), Summer 2005
- pp. 237-255
- 10.1353/ajp.2005.0034
- Article
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Both epistolary rhetoric and the practice of epistolography reflect the fact that competition for prestige was pervasive in Roman culture. Indeed, even Ciceronian letters of consolation, which a modern reader might expect to be exempt from social striving, are shaped by emulation and evaluation. Additionally, consolatory exchanges—letters of consolation preserved together with their replies—show that the challenges to a consolatory letter's bereaved addressee to meet or exceed a certain standard of behavior, and specifically to emulate the letter's author, were answered and challenged in turn.