Letter Writing. Not all correspondence was meant for public consumption; the sending and receiving of messages in private also flourished in ancient Rome. Some writers kept their letters and later published them, so that, from a vantage point centuries later, one can peer into the daily lives of even apolitical figures, whom most primary sources ignore. Perusing some of the letters that survive from antiquity, a modern reader might be reminded of the range of his/her own correspondence, whether by letters or e-mail. Private correspondence from Rome covered many of the same areas: requests to purchase particular items on credit, wishes for a happy birthday, condolences for relatives of the deceased, descriptions of a new house, recommendations of one friend to another, and general gossip and rumor. If the sender was a high-ranking official, he might get to use the imperial...