Abstract
Chapter IV analyses five fictitious letters of advice from the early Imperial period by Melissa, Myia, and Theano. These letters (like Platonic epistles) remain in tension with theoretical discourses. The chapter offers close readings of each of them to demonstrate that Pythagorean women offer a subtle critique of medical and philosophical texts on a number of topics, including infants, the education of children, and relationships with slaves. This strategy is particularly prominent in Myia’s letter about hiring a wet nurse, which goes against the advice of medical writers and Stoic philosophers, but corresponds to the practice and advice preserved in Greek letters from Egypt from this period. More clearly than the treatises, the letters are concerned with women’s interest, while expressing confidence in the intellectual potential of both elite and non-elite women, making a strong case for women’s knowledge based on lived experience.
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