Periodic Reporting for period 2 - LAREGRE (Latin Relics in a Greek Egypt)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2023-02-08 al 2024-02-07
The project LAREGRE focuses on a specific era – Late Antiquity, 200 to 600 AD – in a specific region of Africa – Egypt – and addresses the problem of quite a strong and specific linguistic policy enforced for the first time in that country by its governing powers. It aims to elucidate the reasons, the scope, and the results of that very policy from the documents that came to us from Late Antique Egypt though the medium of papyri sheets and fragments, preserved thanks to the dry climate and the sands.
The linguistic policy I refer to, implemented first by the Roman Emperor Diocletian, then followed by his successors even after the final partition of the Empire (AD 395), consisted in mandating several typologies of documents produced in provincial chanceries – official letters of reproach or recommendation, receipts for military supplies – and the main ones in Imperial capitals – Imperial orders, mostly – to be written entirely or partially in the Latin language, despite the fact that, after 395, the Eastern Roman Empire – and Egypt in particular, one of its wealthiest provinces – were for a vast majority using Greek for everyday communications, as well as their own local languages.
This policy, which forced any individual aiming at a career in civil or military administration to receive at least a smattering of Latin, created a market for Latin teaching – focusing on Roman literature and law – and established Latin as a language of cultivation and solemnity, only attainable by the wealthy and the scholarly, and a mark of being very high in the social ladder. Historians regard this policy as a novelty, for the Roman Empire had never actively tried to undermine the languages of the provinces it conquered or mandated a specific language for the drafting of document; Latin in the West and Greek in the East being the most widespread ones, they were also the expected languages in which documents were written.
Through gathering and categorizing the extant evidence in papyri that can be referred to this practice, LAREGRE investigates the reasons beyond this policy – to be traced back to the crisis the Roman state underwent in the third century AD –, the lengths it reached in the actual provincial offices, the tools employed to enhance Latin literacy in clerks and students, and the reactions it triggered among the Egyptian population; it also tries to understand, what was the degree of rigour demanded by offices in this respect, and how fast the policy declined, as the Eastern Roman Empire lost touch with the Latin-speaking West, until the Arabs took over and captured the country. This persistence of a language in a country where no one speaks it anymore (if anyone ever has), enforced by Imperial authority, speaks more of a symbolic than a practical necessity: Latin became in Late Antiquity the veritable language of the masters, there to remind the provincials on who was in charge.
This study is inspired by, and may relate to, contemporary or recent situations in which a foreign power effectively colonizes a country, and feels the need to underline and reinforce its authority through a linguistic policy where the language of the conqueror becomes the language of power in the conquered country: the voice through which the subjects are addressed, and the tool they must acquire if they have a mind at participating to the administration, if not the decision-making process, concerning their country.
The linguistic policy I refer to, implemented first by the Roman Emperor Diocletian, then followed by his successors even after the final partition of the Empire (AD 395), consisted in mandating several typologies of documents produced in provincial chanceries – official letters of reproach or recommendation, receipts for military supplies – and the main ones in Imperial capitals – Imperial orders, mostly – to be written entirely or partially in the Latin language, despite the fact that, after 395, the Eastern Roman Empire – and Egypt in particular, one of its wealthiest provinces – were for a vast majority using Greek for everyday communications, as well as their own local languages.
This policy, which forced any individual aiming at a career in civil or military administration to receive at least a smattering of Latin, created a market for Latin teaching – focusing on Roman literature and law – and established Latin as a language of cultivation and solemnity, only attainable by the wealthy and the scholarly, and a mark of being very high in the social ladder. Historians regard this policy as a novelty, for the Roman Empire had never actively tried to undermine the languages of the provinces it conquered or mandated a specific language for the drafting of document; Latin in the West and Greek in the East being the most widespread ones, they were also the expected languages in which documents were written.
Through gathering and categorizing the extant evidence in papyri that can be referred to this practice, LAREGRE investigates the reasons beyond this policy – to be traced back to the crisis the Roman state underwent in the third century AD –, the lengths it reached in the actual provincial offices, the tools employed to enhance Latin literacy in clerks and students, and the reactions it triggered among the Egyptian population; it also tries to understand, what was the degree of rigour demanded by offices in this respect, and how fast the policy declined, as the Eastern Roman Empire lost touch with the Latin-speaking West, until the Arabs took over and captured the country. This persistence of a language in a country where no one speaks it anymore (if anyone ever has), enforced by Imperial authority, speaks more of a symbolic than a practical necessity: Latin became in Late Antiquity the veritable language of the masters, there to remind the provincials on who was in charge.
This study is inspired by, and may relate to, contemporary or recent situations in which a foreign power effectively colonizes a country, and feels the need to underline and reinforce its authority through a linguistic policy where the language of the conqueror becomes the language of power in the conquered country: the voice through which the subjects are addressed, and the tool they must acquire if they have a mind at participating to the administration, if not the decision-making process, concerning their country.
The main object of the LAREGRE project is a monograph which collects and investigates upon all the manuscripts (mostly papyri) containing even the smallest traces of Latin on them, coming from Late Antique Egypt. The book consists of a general Introduction (Latin in Egypt before Late Antiquity and the problems of its permanence afterwards), six chapters, each covering one specific textual typology (1. Latin literature and juridical reports; 2. Fully Latin documents; 3. Latin dating formulae attached to Latin and Greek texts; 4. Latin short passages within Greek texts; 5. Latin tags and seals to Greek texts; 6. Notarial subscriptions in Latin alphabet and Greek language to Greek contracts), and a conclusion with a general overview of the results. The monograph has been completed and potential publishers are being solicited.
The contents of these chapters have been disseminated to a professional audience in four hybrid conferences (in person and on Zoom) held in Berkeley between 9 December 2021 and 30 November 2022; further conferences have been attended in Coimbra (25 June 2021), Durham (16 July 2021), Naples (6 July 2022), Lombardy (namely, Villa Vigoni – 30 January 2023), and Paris, within the frame of the XXX International Congress of Papyrology (24 July 2022). Non-professional audience has been tackled through four videos on the use of Latin language in Late Antique Egypt, focusing on four relevant papyri, produced for the Association ‘Glaucopis’ based in Rome, and advertised in their Youtube channel.
Further dissemination has taken place through publications: one recently out (Copres and Domnio. Remarks on P.Mich. VII 460 and 461, «SEP» XIX (2022) 55–78), others waiting peer-reviewed and soon forthcoming: 00. Copy of an Official Letter from the Prefect, in the proceedings of the Papy Congress of 2022; and A Survey on Abbreviating (and Punctuation) Signs in Latin Documentary Papyri, Ostraka and Tablets from Roman Africa and the East (BC I–VII AD), in a volume on Latin texts on papyrus promoted by project PLATINUM – ERC StG n. 636983. The paper ‘Dull, plodding, pedantic – much like yourself’. Late Latin Prose in Egyptian Documents, has been submitted for publication in E. BOZIA – K. BENTEIN – C. MONACO (eds.), Multilingual Literary Practices in a Multicultural World, from Archaic Greece to the Byzantine Empire, 2025.
The contents of these chapters have been disseminated to a professional audience in four hybrid conferences (in person and on Zoom) held in Berkeley between 9 December 2021 and 30 November 2022; further conferences have been attended in Coimbra (25 June 2021), Durham (16 July 2021), Naples (6 July 2022), Lombardy (namely, Villa Vigoni – 30 January 2023), and Paris, within the frame of the XXX International Congress of Papyrology (24 July 2022). Non-professional audience has been tackled through four videos on the use of Latin language in Late Antique Egypt, focusing on four relevant papyri, produced for the Association ‘Glaucopis’ based in Rome, and advertised in their Youtube channel.
Further dissemination has taken place through publications: one recently out (Copres and Domnio. Remarks on P.Mich. VII 460 and 461, «SEP» XIX (2022) 55–78), others waiting peer-reviewed and soon forthcoming: 00. Copy of an Official Letter from the Prefect, in the proceedings of the Papy Congress of 2022; and A Survey on Abbreviating (and Punctuation) Signs in Latin Documentary Papyri, Ostraka and Tablets from Roman Africa and the East (BC I–VII AD), in a volume on Latin texts on papyrus promoted by project PLATINUM – ERC StG n. 636983. The paper ‘Dull, plodding, pedantic – much like yourself’. Late Latin Prose in Egyptian Documents, has been submitted for publication in E. BOZIA – K. BENTEIN – C. MONACO (eds.), Multilingual Literary Practices in a Multicultural World, from Archaic Greece to the Byzantine Empire, 2025.
So far, the evidence on the use of Latin in Late Antique papyri from Egypt has not commanded attention enough to be treated as a collective and consistent phenomenon; we have good studies and edition on single texts or groups of texts, but not a comprehensive study on all of them. The monograph aims to fill this niche and has elucidated the role of Latin in representing the voice and the authority of the Imperial power when directly addressing the subjects (through letters) and when enabling clerks from different offices to communicate with each other (chapter 2); in the addition of tags, short formulae and subscriptions to mostly Greek documents, to authenticate them and enforce their content on the addressees (chapter 3 and 5); and in signalling the shared milieu of Latin education for clergymen and soldiers (chapter 4). The book, now complete, presents an organic and comprehensive view of who and why uses Latin in Egypt after Diocletian, the role of the Late Roman and Byzantine state in it, and the reaction of the subjects to the government’s mandates.