ABSTRACT
The Letters (Epistulae) of Philostratus offer a very different version of the learned interpreter who we find in other Philostratean texts. Just as fear and desire are, in the Life of Apollonius and Heroicus, factors that might vitiate interpretation, here in the Letters these same factors and their delusion of the interpreting subject are the central theme of the collection. The obsessive speaking voice of the letters draws upon a cultural repertoire similar to that of the other texts in order to interpret the various unnamed objects of his desire. It takes to an absurd extreme the lover’s scrutiny of the beloved and the old trope of amatory persuasion.
