ABSTRACT
Pseudonymous letters, also called pseudo-historical or pseudepigraphic, are unique to the period of the Second Sophistic. They are letters written by an anonymous writer in the voice of a famous person, either mythical or historical (Speyer 1971). We have already encountered one example of this in the novella Chion of Heraclea. Later we will see how Alciphron further developed the idea behind such false letter writing by inventing a series of pseudonymous correspondences, some between wholly fictional writers and addressees, others between courtesans and their lovers, including Menander and Epicurus, well known public figures in fourth-century Athens. But the subset of pseudonymous letters collected in this section is attached to such famous historical figures as Socrates, Plato, and Demosthenes, and thus logically termed pseudo-historical.
