In my presentation, I will propose a historical exploration of ancient patterns of audience behavior, emphasizing their similarities with contemporary digital audiences. I focus on a single “medium”, an old technology, much researched in the last 30 years but neglected in media studies: the letter. The letter is a polymorph, multi-generic, multi-use “medium”, with thousand years of history, whose numerous and ambivalent affordances parallel those of the digital world in surprising ways.