Chapter 4 is oriented around a letter-making signet ring whose imprint makes Curculio’s forged text “real.” Its agency, however, is not confined to epistolary deception, and this chapter unpacks the anulus’ potent theatrical agency by elucidating its operation in excess of human design. I shift my focus in exploring the metatheatrical portrait generated by Curculio’s epistolary motif. Whereas Chapters 1 through 3 consider the common ability of letters and scripts to evoke absent people, here I look at the power of these media to conjure up faraway places. Both epistles and dramatic texts bring “here” to “there” (or vice versa), a capacity enacted in Curculio’s composition of a letter at Epidaurus which encapsulates his encounter in Caria and flaunted in the choragus’ tour that blurs the line between theatrical and experiential space. Finally, this chapter returns to questions of innovation and artistic dependence. Curculio’s missive invites us to reflect on the impossibility of originality for the author on the outside when an author on the inside makes the play by recomposing yet another author’s text. A coda considers the play’s seal as related to the literary sphragis.

This chapter reads the cycle of letters to Quadratus and Fuscus of which Epistles 7.9 (Chapter 8) forms the keystone. Epistles 6.11 introduces these two young men as the bright future of Roman oratory, with a fanfare constructed from Quintilian (Institutio 10) and Tacitus’ Aper (Dialogus). Epistles 6.29 is the partner to Epistles 7.9, matching but varying its imitation of Quintilian and Cicero, as Pliny continues playing praeceptor in surprising and arch ways. Epistles 9.36 and 9.40, describing his villa routine to Fuscus, constitute the twin sphragis of the collection. These deceptively simple letters take us to the core of Pliny’s self-styling as man and author, perofmed with pregnant imitations which confirm Quintilian’s very special, and very personal, role in the Epistles.