In another essay Epp also demonstrated how readily people expected to send and receive letters all across the Roman Empire, reflecting more broadly a “brisk ‘intellectual commerce’ and dynamic interchanges of people, literature, books, and letters between Egypt and the vast Mediterranean region.”64 In illustration of this, note that we have at least three copies of the Shepherd of Hermas that are dated to the late second/early third century, at most only a few decades later than the composition of