Who Seduced Whom? Ἔρως, Ἀπουσία and Epistolary Performance

This article offers a philological and literary reassessment of Epistle 2.23a, a fragment traditionally linked to the Aristaenetus corpus. It presents the Greek text with English translation and traces its editorial history, focusing on the interventions of Kontos, Bast, and Boissonade. The study situates the fragment within the tradition of fictional epistolography and explores its potential inclusion in Aristaenetus’s literary output. It examines the role of pseudonymous letter-writing across classical and Byzantine genres, highlighting its performative and affective dimensions. Through a detailed analysis of narrative structure, lexical texture, and thematic ambiguity, the story of Theocles, Myron, and Chorine is interpreted as a stylised lament probing ἔρως, φιλία, and ξενία. Particular attention is given to onomastic symbolism, rhetorical strategies, and female agency, all framed within late antique cultural codes. The article concludes by reflecting on the fragment’s transmission and authenticity, arguing that its interpretive value lies less in authorial certainty than in its aesthetic resonance and ethical complexity. Ultimately, the epistle is read as a performative space where intimacy, betrayal, and literary memory converge, inviting reconsideration of the boundaries between fiction and confession, and of how epistolary form can encode emotional rupture, moral ambiguity, and cultural nostalgia within a deceptively simple narrative frame.