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These are five short letters transmitted under the name of Dio Chrysostom (Dio of Prusa), the Greek orator and philosopher of the 1st and 2nd centuries AD; their authenticity is disputed. The first two are letters of recommendation, one addressed to a Rufus, commending the bearer as a modest and reasonable man involved in a lawsuit. They are printed in Hercher's Epistolographi Graeci.
Whether genuine or not, the letters are examples of the Greek letter of recommendation, a common practical genre in the Roman world. They shed light on patronage and on the social networks through which men of the Greek cities sought help from influential friends.
About this edition. The Greek text comes from the Eulogikon open corpus of public-domain editions (standard reference: Hercher, Epistolographi Graeci, Dion epp. 1–5; von Arnim II). Every word has been analyzed with odyCy, a neural language model for Ancient Greek — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from the Liddell–Scott–Jones Greek–English Lexicon (LSJ). The five letters transmitted under Dio of Prusa's name are of disputed authenticity.