Curated collection of 7,049 surviving letters (100-800 AD) maps the collapse of Roman communication networks across the Western and Eastern Empire.
Key Takeaways
Western letter volume dropped from 2,112 per generation in 350-390 AD to 182 after 604 AD, tracking infrastructure collapse in real correspondence data.
The Eastern Roman network did not collapse in the 5th century; 2,363 letters survive from Eastern correspondents, with disruption arriving only in the 630s-640s via Arab conquests.
Gregory the Great (590-604 AD) accounts for 821 surviving letters alone, illustrating how the network concentrated into a single node before going dark.
Cassiodorus kept Latin bureaucratic letter tradition alive under Ostrogothic rule, producing 1,073 letters from the early 500s.
3,123 letters appear in English for the first time across 60 author collections, making this the largest such English-language assembly.
Hacker News Comment Review
Discussion is minimal; the one substantive exchange riffs on Pliny the Younger’s dinner-party complaint letter and the obscure Roman delicacy “sow’s matrices” (vulva of a sow), indicating the site’s browsable letter interface surfaces genuinely entertaining primary sources.
Notable Comments
@Rendello: flagged Pliny the Younger letter #1015 as a standout – a Roman complaining about a no-show guest, linking directly to romanletters.org.
