Abstract

This chapter examines the ways in which four different pseudonymous letter-collections portray themselves as the work of their purported famous authors; how the authority of individual letter- and wider collections depends on the creation of an impression of authorship by a particular historical individual; and the functions to which the authority so created are put. The chapter focusses on how the theme of authenticity is important in these texts, and how they have a complex relationship with mainstream biographical traditions about their purported authors. The picture that emerges points to a sophisticated conception of authorship and provides important evidence for the relationship of the narrating voice of a text and its supposed author in antiquity.