OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village

7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village

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Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt, Part V, Chapter 32, pp. 526542

(Preprint)

[Title] Greek Language, Education, and Literary Culture

[Author] Amin Benaissa

When Egypt came under the rule of Rome, all inhabitants of the province who were

not citizens of Alexandria or the two Greekpoleis of Naukratis and Ptolemais were,

from the Roman juridical point of view, Egyptians. For pragmatic and historical

reasons, however, the Roman administration preserved Greek as the de facto official

language of the province and continued to differentiate and favour a hereditary class

of Greeks among the landowning elite of the nome capitals, who enjoyed a lower

rate of taxation, filled the towns magistracies, and supplied a ready pool from which

to select provincial administrators (Bowman and Rathbone 1992). For this redefined

status group, it was ideologically and practically vital to continue affirming a distinct

Greek identity against the rest of the Egyptian population.

Beside institutional determinants such as membership in the gymnasium (a

hereditary privilege controlled through a rigorous examination), education and pride

in the Greek language, its literary traditions, and the values embodied in themin

short, what Greeks called paideiaplayed a fundamental role in maintaining a stable

Greek identity, a sense of continuity with the idealized classical past, and solidarity

with other Greeks in the Roman East. Self-perceived cultural distinction reinforced

and legitimized socio-economic privilege, especially since the acquisition of Greek


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culture presupposed some degree of wealth and leisure. Greek literature, nevertheless,

was not restricted to consolidating the identity of a closed group of elites, for it could

be co-opted by individuals of primarily Egyptian background to participate in the

dominant culture, negotiate a supplementary Hellenic identity, and climb the social

ladder.

It is partly against this complex socio-historical backdrop that the full-fledged

Greek education and vigorous literary culture outlined in this chapter should be

viewed. The important place of Greek literature in Roman Egypt is further underlined

by the heritage of the Ptolemaic period, when Alexandria was a beacon of learning

and culture in the Hellenistic world, a role it continued to play in the Imperial period,

albeit in a significantly transformed Mediterranean context. After a brief

characterization of the Greek spoken and written in Roman Egypt, this chapter

examines the stages and social aspects of Greek education, the range of the periods

literary papyri and what they reveal about the tastes and identities of their readers, and

finally the literary and scholarly life of Roman Alexandria (the chronological

framework is roughly the first three centuries CE).

[Sub-head level 1] Greek Language

The Greek language retained its prominence in Roman Egypt, as it did in other

provinces of the Roman East with a former Greek presence. Greek continued to be the

language of the administration, most legal documents, the urban elite, and the

literature they read. The use of Egyptian Demotic for documents declined markedly in

the Roman period, while Latin was restricted principally to the military and the

minority of Roman citizens in the province. The Greek written and spoken in Egypt in

this period was a version of the so-called koine, or common dialect, that developed


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in the fourth-century BCE and became widespread throughout the Near East after the

diaspora of Greeks following Alexander the Greats conquests. This was a simplified

and standardized form of Attic-Ionic Greek comparable to that encountered in the

Gospels.

The reconstruction of the phonology, morphology, and syntax of this dialect as

it was spoken in Roman Egypt relies primarily on the evidence of documentary papyri

(Gignac 19761981; summaries in Gignac 1985 and Dickey 2009). The irregularities

exhibited by less proficient writers often furnish clues to the character of the spoken

language, provided they are sufficiently frequent and consistent. The use of written

evidence for the study of a once living and changing language, however, is not

straightforward. On the one hand, variations could be insignificant, idiosyncratic, or

due to scribal incompetence; on the other, the written language was naturally more

uniform and conservative than speech. It is also difficult to date linguistic changes

precisely on the basis of writing alone. Nevertheless, the sheer quantity and variety of

documents and comparisons with Modern Greek and other sources for koine Greek

inspire sufficient confidence in the validity of the above method.

Orthographic variations, particularly the interchanges between some letters to

represent the same phoneme, show that the pronunciation of Greek in Roman Egypt

was closer to Modern than to classical Greek. A pervasive feature was the merger of

once distinct vowels, notably and (pronounced //), , , and (all approximating/i/), and and (representing /y/). Several phonetic phenomena, such as the equationof voiced and voiceless stops (e.g. and ) and the liquids and , suggest a

significant level of bilingual interference from Egyptian, although the extent to

which monolingual speakers of Greek also acquired and exhibited these features in

their daily speech is arguable. By the Roman period, Greek had also completely lost


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its pitch accent in favour of a stress accent, all distinction between long and short

vowels, and probably all aspiration (initial h sound). In morphology, the declensional

and conjugation systems were simplified considerably, irregular and complex forms

becoming altered on the analogy of more regular forms. Apart from phonetic

influences and some technical words inherited from the Ptolemaic period, Greek

continued to be impervious to Egyptian loanwords, in marked contrast to Egyptian

vis--vis Greek (as shown later by Coptic; see Chapter 35). Latin, on the other hand,

the language of the new rulers of Egypt, does make gradual inroads into Greek

vocabulary and syntax, reaching a peak of influence in the fourth century (Dickey

2003). Syntax remains a poorly studied aspect of the Greek language of the period, in

which there is much scope for research (Porter 2007).

[Sub-head level 1] Greek Literary Education

The constantly evolvingspoken koine was by the Roman period far removed from the

language of the texts that had come to define the classical canon of Greek literature,

such as Homer, the tragic and comic dramatists, Plato, and Demosthenes. The

growing gap between everyday Greek and classical Greek made a rigorous education

all the more imperative for the ability to read and understand literature and to write

according to its models in other words, for admittance to that narrow circle of

cultured Greeks orpepaideumenoi. For Roman Egypt, we are particularly fortunate

that the paper trail of the educational process survives. Various types of student

exercises, teachers models, and school texts have been preserved on papyrus,

potsherds, and tablets, ranging from rudimentary first steps in writing to grammatical

drills to advanced poetical and rhetorical compositions. In addition, private letters

from parents to their children (or vice versa) and other documents occasionally


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illuminate the social context and organization of education, parental attitudes and

levels of involvement, and students concerns. Despite this wealth of primary

materials, the subject received a solid and systematic grounding only in the relatively

recent work of Raffaella Cribiore (1996a, 2001; cf. also Morgan 1998, problematic in

places).

As in the rest of the contemporary Graeco-Roman world, education in Roman

Egypt was a privately organized affair, unregulated by the state. Parents had to

arrange, monitor, and determine the extent of their childrens education, depending on

their means, the local availability of teachers, and the expected future roles of their

children in society. Only once in the mid-third century do we hear of a public

grammarian who received a stipend from the city council of Oxyrhynchus, but

nothing is known about his specific remit (P.Oxy. XLVII 3366). The physical setting

of education could be rather informal and depended on the individual teacher. A

schoolroom preserving a wall covered with poetic exhortations to students has been

unearthed in Dakhla Oasis (Fig. 32.1; see Cribiore, Davoli, and Ratzan 2008). Despite

its non-institutional character, education followed a broadly uniform cultural matrix

throughout the Greek world, including Egypt. Cribiore and Morgan have shown that

the evidence of the papyri largely agrees with literary sources on Graeco-Roman

educational practices in the Imperial period such as Quintilian and Libanius, but helps

to correct the idealistic and prescriptive tendencies of these writers by providing a

more direct, variegated, and concrete perspective.

Greek education is traditionally divided into three stages, although actual

practice may not have been so schematic (see below). The first stage, taught by the

grammatodidaskalos (teacher of letters), attracted a greater number and wider

variety of students, providing them with reading and writing skills and basic


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numeracy. In this and the succeeding stages, the main methodological principles

governing education were those of imitation and embryonic progression, each

successive element building upon the previous one in a gradually ascending order of

Fig. 32.1. The wall of a schoolroom painted by a teacher with short epigrams

addressed to his students. This and other recent discoveries in the Great Oasis

demonstrate that Greek education and literary culture were alive and well even in

such remote parts of the province. Trimithis (Amheida), House B1, Room 15, eastwall. First half of fourth century CE. Photo courtesy of Amheida Excavations, New

York University.


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complexity. Thus, a pupil learning to read would usually begin with letters of the

alphabet, proceed to all possible combinations of vowels and consonants in syllables,

followed by words (themselves sometimes in an ascending number of syllables),

sentences, and short passages. Students were confronted with a smattering of classical

literature from this early stage. Although they may not have understood or even been

able to read properly what they were copying, they were often given maxims and

short passages from literature, especially Homer and Euripides, to copy for writing

practice or to memorise. Word lists employed in the learning of reading and writing

were sometimes arranged in thematic groups (e.g. gods, mythological figures, birds)

and thus served to build a cultural vocabulary.

After the acquisition of basic reading and writing skills, some children went

on to learn grammar and study classical literature at the hands of a grammarian

(grammatikos). This was the essential formative stage of a liberal education or

culture (paideia) and was focused on the reading and explication of poetry. Homers

Iliad was the staple element in the early educational diet. When a mother enquired

from a teacher what her son was reading, the answer was the sixth book

undoubtedly a reference to Book 6 of the Iliadwith its celebrated vignettes of life in

besieged Troy (P.Oxy. VI 930). The plays of Euripides, the most accessible of the

classical tragedians, also figured prominently in the grammarians classroom, with the

moralistic orations of Isocrates, the comedies of Menander, and fables following

closely behind in popularity. A common trait binding the selections of these authors

(apart from Homer) is their sententious content, for they are typically interspersed

with maxims (gnmai) and thus were perceived as effective vehicles for the moral

instruction of children. In teaching literature, the grammarians emphasis was on the

elucidation of technical aspects (vocabulary, grammar, accentuation, tropes) and of


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content (paraphrases, explanation of places, persons, and events) rather than on

holistic criticism. Students also learned declensions, conjugations, and grammatical

concepts systematically, a Roman-period innovation reflecting perhaps the growing

distance of everyday speech from literary language. Composition does not appear to

have been cultivated at this stage, except for the preparation of short paraphrases and

elementary versification; but letters from children to their parents suggest that

students were encouraged to develop epistolary skills as a means of displaying their

education.

Finally, in the third stage, ambitious and gifted young men of the elite (from

about the age of 15) learned the art of proper speech and rhetorical composition,

prerequisite skills for eventual public careers, by attending the lectures of a rhetoror

sophistes. Preliminary exercises, called progymnasmata, provided the student of

rhetoric a transition from the predominantly poetic world of the grammarian by taking

as subjects stock situations or characters from epic poetry or tragedy. The commonest

types of exercises were ethopoiiai, in which the student was asked to impersonate a

mythological figure responding to a particular situation, and enkomia, speeches of

praise (e.g. the encomium of the fig in P.Oxy. XVII 2084). Strikingly, many such

compositions found in Egypt are not in prose like the examples known from literary

sources, but in verse. Whether this was an Egyptian peculiarity or the result of poorer

evidence from elsewhere remains a debatable question. More advanced students

engaged in the composition of declamations (meletai), usually on historical

deliberative themes or fictitious forensic ones. One papyrus gives as an assignment

for one such declamation a subject inspired by Thucydides Peloponnesian Wars:

For proposing to put to death the male population of Mytilene Cleon is accused of

demagogy (P.Oxy. XXIV 2400; cf. P.Oxy. LXXI 4810). This example implies that


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the study of rhetoric was accompanied by close scrutiny of the classical orators and

historians, who were meant to serve as constant models.

It is important to stress that the three educational levels sketched here were not

always discrete. A particular teacher could impart instruction at varying levels in one

and the same classroom (as shown by tablets shared by different students, e.g.

Cribiore 1996a, no. 388), and the contents of the different stages sometimes

overlapped, borders being especially porous between advanced grammatical and early

rhetorical education, where poetry and rhetoric freely intermingled. Progress through

these three broad tracks was not simply meritocratic, but was heavily affected by

socio-economic factors such as wealth, status, gender, and the resulting professional

ambitions or expectations, not to mention the sometimes difficult availability of

teachers for higher levels (compare P.Oxy. VI 930; SB XXII 15708). Grammarians

are not clearly attested in villages, for instance, so that only relatively well-off rural

families could send their children to receive higher instruction in cities. Similarly, the

best rhetorical education was to be obtained in Alexandria, where only the wealthy

city elite could afford to send their children (together with pedagoguesusually

slavesto look after them and supervise their studies). The economically privileged

character of literary education emerges clearly from a speech in defense of an

orphans guardian, in which a distinction is made between the suitability ofpaideia

for the better off and of a trade apprenticeship for the poorer lot (P.Mich. IX 532 as

corrected inBL IX 161). Although primary and grammatical education was not closed

to women, and there is evidence for female teachers, womens education was even

more tightly bound to socioeconomic status: only girls from the upper classes could

expect some instruction, which often did not proceed beyond the elementary stage


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(Fig. 32.2). Rhetorical training, a propaedeutic for public life, was a purely male

affair. With its unwavering focus on the old authors and reverence for the classical

Fig. 32.2. Portrait on the mummy of a woman from the Fayum, identifying her as

Hermionegrammatike, a word that may denote either a woman teacher of literature or

an educated lady (see Montserrat 1997). She was about 25 at the time of her death.

First century CE. Photo courtesy of The Mistress and Fellows, Girton College,

Cambridge.


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past, Greek education mostly marginalized the Egyptian reality surrounding it. The

few exceptions, such as a narrative about Amenophis written in an elementary hand

that may be a students (P.Oxy. XLII 3011) and a couple of hymns to the Nile, do not

significantly challenge this impression (Cribiore 1996b: 51525).

That education was key to professional or social advancement in some circles

was keenly felt. Upon his arrival in the port of Misenum in Italy, a young recruit in

the Roman navy from the village of Philadelphia composed a fine letter to reassure

his father and express thanks that you educated me well and I hope thereby to have

quick advancement (Sel.Pap. I 112). For those who, for various circumstances, could

not progress beyond the elementary stage, the main benefit to their adult lives was

functional literacy and a superficial familiarity with some important Hellenic cultural

symbols. Those who were privileged enough to pursue a grammatical and rhetorical

education acquired a decisive cultural capital that integrated them in a socio-political

elite for which literary culture and monopoly of right speech were closely associated

with high status, authority, and power; they were thereby well placed for participating

in civic life and pursuing careers in public administration and law. The more serious

students had the potential to become amateur or even professional scholars, while a

few gifted ones ended up as poets, orators, and writers in their own right (see below).

Advanced students of literature and rhetoric already had opportunities to display their

learning and talents in contests organized by cities. P.Oxy. XXII 2338 (see Coles

1975) lists Oxyrhynchite participants in annual contests of trumpeters, heralds, and

poets held in Naukratis, who as a result enjoyed exemption from taxation and

honorary Naucratite citizenship; their ages range from 15 to 24, including a poet aged

19 who is learning letters, that is, still a student (some of the poets, it is worth

remarking, have purely Egyptian names).


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Beyond the public glare of spectators, educated adults could exhibit their

Greek culture in everyday life. In a business letter to an estate manager (P.Flor. II

259), the apparently exasperated sender added in the margin the first two lines ofIliad

Book 2, copying twice the phrase all night they slepta pointed accusation of the

addressees listlessness? (For other literary allusions or quotations in letters, see

P.Oxy. XXXIV 2728.9 with Pruneti 1996: 3967; W.Chr. 478; SPP XX 61.) A

bilingual tax collector, the Socrates of Karanis mentioned below, even amused

himself by translating Egyptian names of taxpayers into Greek, using in one instance

an obscure word found only in the learned poet Callimachus (Youtie 1970). Others

gave their private letters a literary flavour (e.g. P.Oxy. LV 3812) or demonstrated

their culture through the conspicuous consumption of luxury bookrolls.

[Sub-head level 1] Literary Papyri and their Readers

The works read by the educated stratum of the population are preserved in hundreds

of fragments of papyrus bookrolls, the bulk of them from the Roman era. These

literary papyri are celebrated chiefly for having resuscitated long-lost authors and

works, thereby significantly expanding and sometimes revolutionizing our knowledge

of ancient Greek literature. From a socio-historical perspective, they are also valuable

for revealing the literary tastes and activities of the period as well as scribal practices

and aspects of book production (the latter subject will not be broached here, but it

should be mentioned that our period saw the beginning of the transition from roll to

codex). Despite their chance survival, the sheer range, variety, and quantity of authors

and works represented in the papyri of the first three centuries CE are remarkable,

especially when compared to the period following the fourth century (cf. Maehler

1998). They reflect a vibrant Hellenic cultural milieu in towns of the Nile valley like


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Oxyrhynchus (Krger 1990: 144260; Parsons 2007: 13758; Bowman et al. 2007)

and Hermopolis (van Minnen and Worp 1993), and even in some villages of the

Fayum (van Minnen 1998).

The frequency of papyri of various authors could serve as an impressionistic

guide to literary tastes, but such statistics should be used with caution given the

papyris random survival, their uneven chronological and geographical dispersal,

editorial choice, and the continual publication of new texts (Willis 1968; Krger

1990: 21456). The most popular authors represent by and large an extension of the

canonical authors read in school. Towering far above the rest was Homer, the focal

point of Greek culture (not a man but a god according to a school exercise),

especially his Iliad, whose Roman-period papyri constitute about a fourth of

published literary papyri, not counting the extensive apparatus of reading aids

(commentaries, glosses, paraphrases, summaries) required for comprehending such an

archaic author. Following behind the Poet were many authors familiar to a modern

audience, although the range of their works preserved in the papyri (especially the

poets) is much wider than what survived through medieval transmission: Hesiod (not

only his two well-known didactic poems but also his mythological catalogue-poetry),

the odes of Pindar, the Attic dramatists (especially Euripides), Platos dialogues, and

the fifth- and fourth-century historians (Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon) and

orators (Demosthenes and Isocrates taking pride of place).

This generally conservative taste and focus on canonical authors underscores

the centrality of the classical past for Greek self-identity in the Imperial period (Swain

1996: 65100). It is instructive to observe, however, that poets of the Hellenistic

period, such as Callimachus, Apollonius Rhodius, and Euphorion, many of whose

works did not make it through the early medieval bottleneck, were still avidly read. In


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contrast to Byzantine tastes, New Comedy and particularly Menander were more

popular than the Old Comedy of Aristophanes. Contemporary literature, although

more sparsely attested, was not altogether neglected, and papyri illustrate how Egypt

participated in the new literary trends of the Imperial period (Reardon 1971). Chief

among these was the novel (Stephens and Winkler 1995), usually romances telling

of the separation, adventures, and reunion of two noble adolescent lovers or more

salacious narratives with scandalous heroes and satiric undertones like the Iolaos, in

which a young man pretends to be a eunuch devotee of the goddess Cybele to gain

access to his paramour (P.Oxy. XLII 3010). Although a lighter type of literature, some

of these works are written in a rhetorically accomplished style and polished language,

suggesting that they were meant to be appreciated by a refined audience. Such

rhetorical attainment was in keeping with the contemporary Second Sophistic

movement (see below), members of which, like Dio Chrysostom, Aelius Aristides,

Lucian, and Favorinus, have left scattered witnesses in the papyri. Imperial-period

historians and geographers (Strabo, Josephus, possibly Arrian), philosophers (Philo,

Cornutus, Plutarch), and poets (Oppian, Babrius, Ps.-Manetho, Sibylline Oracles) also

make occasional appearances.

Among the papyri could also be detected more scholarly and learned readers,

who sought rare or difficult works, whether lyric poetry or specialist philosophy, and

technical works like treatises, commentaries, and lexica. Beside their non-canonical

content, the papyri they read are often recognizable from their marginal annotations,

critical signs, and informed corrections of the text (Turner 1980: 924). The

intellectuals who possessed them are probably those members of society who proudly

bear the title of philosophos (not necessarily in the strict sense) in everyday

documents (Pruneti 1996). Many will have had an educational background in


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Alexandria, maintained contact with the cultural capital, and even exercised didactic

functions (cf. P.Hamb. I 37). The postscript of a letter from Oxyrhynchus vividly

illustrates the world of the scholar, in which erudite books were eagerly sought among

friendly circles, exchanged, and copied. The unknown but clearly learned sender

requests from a friend who was probably in Alexandria: Make and send me copies of

Books 6 and 7 of Hypsicrates Characters in Comedy; for Harpocration says they are

among Pollios books, but it is likely that others too have got them. He also has

prose(?) epitomes of ThersagorasMyths of Tragedy (P.Oxy. XVIII 2192, reedited by

Hatzilambrou 2007). This note reinforces the impression of strong cultural links

binding Alexandria and provincial cities like Oxyrhynchus, for both Harpocration and

(Valerius) Pollio are identifiable with known Alexandrian scholars (see below).

Not only were the provinces inhabitants consumers of literature, but they

were capable of producing their own. A number of original poems and rhetorical

declamations have survived, sometimes in autograph form (Dorandi 2000: 5175),

most of which were composed either in an advanced educational context or for

particular occasions such as festivals, contests, or official celebrations. The following

examples give a flavour of the pices doccasion produced and appreciated in the

towns of Roman Egypt: a hymn to Hermes leading to the praise of a young

gymnasiarch, who is notably described as a man learned in the Muses arts (P.Oxy.

VII 1015); a speech in honour of some individual delivered by a professional rhetor in

the gymnasium of Hermopolis (P.Brem. 46); a dramatic performance in which the

god Apollo announces the accession of Hadrian (P.Giss.Lit. 4.4); a poem celebrating

Diocletian and probably performed before dignitaries on the occasion of the

Capitoline Games in Oxyrhynchus (P.Oxy. LXIII 4352). Some poets like Anubion of

Diospolis, author of an astrological didactic poem (seeP.Oxy. LXVI pp. 5766), and


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Soterichus of Oasis (Livrea 2002) may have begun their careers in similar local

contexts, but found fame beyond Egypt, foreshadowing the empire-wide prominence

of poets from the Nile valley in late antiquity (cf. Migulez-Cavero 2008). Literary

entertainment was also available in the towns in the form of performances by actors

of Homeric scenes (homristai; Husson 1993) and poetic competitions during

festivals or games (P.Oxy. III 519, VII 1025, 1050; P.Oslo III 189; SB IV 7336) as

well as theatrical shows ranging from popular mime to lofty tragedy (for actors

copies on papyrus, see Gammacurta 2006).

Although many papyri were recovered in uncontrolled excavations or were

acquired on the antiquities market without any knowledge of their provenance and

circumstances of discovery, one of the more exciting trends in recent scholarship has

been the attempt to connect groups of literary papyri with the private library of an

individual or family, thanks to some knowledge of the archaeological context and the

association of literary papyri with documentary archives (literary texts were not

infrequently copied on the back of documents or vice versa; Lama 1991; cf. Clarysse

1983). These associations confirm the strong link between elevated socio-political

status and literary culture. One find of literary texts from Oxyrhynchus comprising a

varied collection of the classics is believed to relate to the well-known family of

Sarapion alias Apollonianus, whose most illustrious member was governor of the

Arsinoite and Hermopolite nomes and gymnasiarch and councillor of Oxyrhynchus in

the early third century (Funghi and Messeri 1992 with the correctives and caution of

Houston 2007). A smaller group of papyri, including rare items like the Charms of

Iulius Africanus and an unknown history of Sikyon, was probably inherited by an

Aurelia Ptolemais from her father, a wealthy man who served as president of the

council of Oxyrhynchus (Bagnall 1992). Other anonymous private book collections


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can be glimpsed from lists of books and concentrations of papyri in particular finds

(Houston 2009). Public libraries, incidentally, are not positively attested in Roman

Egypt, though it has long been speculated that they existed in gymnasia.

Where their provenance is known, the great majority of literary papyri have

been excavated from metropoleis rather than villages, reflecting the greater Hellenic

character of the former over the latter. The villages of the Fayum (an area of heavy

Greek settlement in the Ptolemaic period), however, have also yielded a significant

number of literary texts, suggesting that their elites aspired to the same culture as their

urban counterparts (van Minnen 1998). Some of these texts are associated with

veterans and officials. The best known is the above-mentioned Socrates of Karanis, a

tax-collector and owner of a grand house in the village, in which was found a small

collection of literary fragments including Menander, Callimachus, and two

grammatical treatises (van Minnen 1998: 1323). Interestingly, some of the Greek

literary texts from the villages of the Fayum were discovered in temple areas and

belong to archives that include Egyptian literary and religious texts. Their readership

apparently consisted of bicultural priestly families who appropriated and established

points of contact with the Graeco-Roman culture of the urban elite. Similar milieus

can be postulated to account for the continued circulation of Greek translations of

Egyptian texts (e.g. The Myth of the Suns Eye; West 1969) and devotional

literature inspired by Egyptian models (e.g. the aretalogies of Isis and Imouthes-

Asclepius inP.Oxy. XI 138081) (cf. Quack 2009). These works are a reminder that

Greek literary expression, far from being the preserve of a parochial elite, could also

serve the interests of the native tradition and help infiltrate or even challenge the

politically dominant culture. The nationalistic oracular literature translated from

Demotic is another case in point (Koenen 2002).


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[Sub-head level 1] Alexandria as Intellectual and Cultural Centre

As already noted, those parents of the provincial elite wishing to give their children

the best grammatical and rhetorical education sent them to Alexandria, the traditional

seat of Greek culture and learning, which radiated both inwards toward the Egyptian

chora and outwards toward the wider Graeco-Roman world. Alexandria had certainly

lost some of its preeminent status as a centre of literary culture and scholarship since

Ptolemy VIII expelled many of its intellectuals upon ascending the throne in 145 BCE

(FGrH 270 F 9 = Ath. 4.83). Even before the Imperial period, Rome supplanted

Alexandria as the prime magnet for poets, philosophers, and scholars seeking

patronage and well-stocked librariesincluding a great number of Alexandrians (cf.

Turner 2007: 157; Fraser 1972: 4745). Writing in the reign of Augustus, Strabo

(14.5.15) describes contemporary Rome as full of Tarsian and Alexandrian

philologoi. The explosive popularity of the Second Sophistic in the late first and

second centuries, an archaizing cultural movement promoting rhetorical display and a

linguistic and literary revival of the classical past, which was enthusiastically fostered

by philhellenic emperors like Hadrian and whose epicentre was in Asia Minor and

Athens, also ensured a shift away from Alexandria and toward old Greece among

the educated Greek and Roman elite at large.

Despite these changes in the cultural geography of the Mediterranean,

philological scholarship and literary production were by no means eclipsed in Roman

Alexandria. In addition, the city continued to be a renowned centre for the study of

medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and other sciences (witness only Ptolemy, author

of the seminal Almagest), as well as philosophy and theology, areas that lie outside

the scope of this chapter (for an overview see Fraser 1972: 80912; Bowman 1986:

22730). Some of the greatest intellectuals of their timeStrabo, Plutarch, Dio


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Chrysostom, Aelius Aristides, Lucian, Galenvisited Alexandria and in some cases

spent an extended period there. The Alexandrians themselves do not seem to have had

doubts about their standing. Their cultural chauvinism manifests itself, for example,

in a petition to an early Roman emperor in which they declare that they wish to guard

the citizen body of Alexandria from corruption by the uncultured and uneducated

(athreptoi kai anagogoi), probably a reference to Egyptians and Jews (C.Pap.Iud. II

150).

The museum of Alexandria, a shrine to the Muses hosting a community of

publicly maintained intellectuals and scientists, persisted under the patronage of the

Roman emperors. Augustus directly appointed its head-priest, a practice apparently

maintained by his successors (Strabo 17.1.8). The bookish Claudius built a new wing,

where he instituted annual public readings of his Greek histories of Etruria and

Carthage (Suet. Claud. 42; Ath. 6.37). Caracalla, in contrast, appears to have

abolished the benefits enjoyed by the museums philosophers (Cass. Dio 78.7.3). An

apparent novelty of the Roman period is that membership in the museum was now

also conferred as an honour, sometimes by the emperor himself, to distinguished civic

or military officials who were not necessarily scholars, littrateurs, or philosophers,

although it is possible that some may have entertained literary ambitions (Lewis

1995). Like all members, they enjoyed the privileges of tax-exemption (ateleia) and,

if they resided in Alexandria, free maintenance (sitesis). Although often seen as a

degeneration of the original function of the museum, such a practice demonstrates

both imperial promotion and control of traditional Greek cultural institutions and the

high prestige still associated with the museum.

The fate of the twin-sister institution of the museum, the famous library, is less

clear. The topic has generated endless debate fed by contradictory ancient sources,


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uncertainty about the physical relationship between the museum and the library, and a

fixation with identifying a single apocalyptic event marking the end of this half-

legendary establishment (Canfora 1989; el-Abbadi 1990; a brief but sober appraisal of

the question in Bagnall 2002). The late first-century writer Plutarch (Vit. Caes. 49)

says that the great library was destroyed in the fire started by Caesar when he was

besieged in the royal palace of Alexandria in 48 BCE, but some scholars have

discredited this statement in confrontation with other ancient sources (particularly

Cass. Dio 42.38.2); they suggest that only certain warehouses by the harbour in which

books were stored caught fire and that the library, indivisible from the museum, met

its real end in 272, when the whole Brucheion quarter in which the museum was

situated was destroyed (Amm. Marc. 22.16.15). A confident solution is simply

impossible on the basis of the available evidence. Whether the main library was

destroyed or not, wholly or in part, some substantial collection of books must have

underpinned the continuing scholarly activity and renown of Alexandria during the

Roman period. Revealingly, Domitian, in his effort to rebuild the libraries of Rome

that burned in the fire of 80 CE, sent scribes to Alexandria to copy lost works (Suet.

Dom. 20; cf. Cass. Dio 66.24). The more shadowy daughter library in the Serapeum

would also have persisted until the destruction of the latter in 391.

The far from stagnant literary life of Roman Alexandria can be best illustrated

by focusing on the age of Hadrian, an emperor who actively encouraged Greek

literature and culture. During his visit to Egypt in 130, he is said to have put forth

many questions to the professors in the museum (SHA Hadr. 20). One of the heads

of the museum under his reign was Iulius Vestinus, an equestrian procurator and a

scholar-sophist who eventually rose to become director of the imperial secretariat

(Fein 1994: 26770). Although apparently not an Alexandrian, he must have been at


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home in the citys intellectual climate, since he was responsible for epitomizing the

enormous lexicon in ninety-five books by the first-century Alexandrian scholar

Pamphilus (non-extant, but an ancestor of the partially surviving lexicon of

Hesychius). At the same period and in a more technical vein, Nicanor was busy

producing several works on punctuation, earning him the sobriquet of Punctuator

(stigmatias), and even a treatise on Alexandria itself.

It was probably during Hadrians stay in the city that the Alexandrian orator

Aelius Sarapion wrote a panegyric on the emperor; he was also the author of a

rhetorical treatise and various speeches, such as a declamation on the

characteristically sophistic subject of whether Plato justly banned Homer from the

Republic (Suda, s.v. 115). Before undertaking their fateful trip up the

Nile, Hadrian and his young lover Antinous participated in a lion hunt, which the

Alexandrian Pancrates vividly related in an epic-encomiastic poem. In it he proposed

that the colour of the red lotus derived from the blood spilled by the slain lion and

renamed it accordingly the flower of Antinous. Gratified by the poem, Hadrian

granted him membership in the museum (Garzya 1984; Fein 1994: 10712). Antinous

was subsequently to become a popular literary theme in Egypt (seeP.Oxy. LXIII pp.

23). It is probably from among the entourage of Hadrian that another member of the

museum, the self-styled Homeric poet Areius, left an epigram inscribed on the

Colossus of Memnon in Thebes (IGLCM37; Fein 1994: 11415). The best-known

Alexandrian poet of this (and indeed the Imperial) period, however, is Dionysius

Periegetes(the Guide), author of a popular didactic poem in hexameters describing

the inhabited world (Amato 2005). His name, origin, and time are cleverly given

away in two acrostics (lines 11234, 51332), where the initial letter of each verse


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spells out Dionysius of those within the Pharus (i.e. Alexandria) and god Hermes

(perhaps a reference to the deified Antinous), in the time of Hadrian.

Philological scholarship in Alexandria was not, of course, confined to the

Hadrianic age, although it appears to have suffered a marked decline in the third

century and, in contrast to the early Ptolemaic period, the city was generally more an

exporter than a magnet of scholarly talent and innovation. Standing at the threshold of

the Roman period were some of the last representatives of the great period of

Hellenistic scholarship, men like Tryphon, one of the key founders of normative

grammar, and Didymus Brazen-Guts, who synthesized much of prior scholarship in

an astonishing number of books. In the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, the

continuation of the Alexandrian critical and exegetical tradition is represented in the

learned commentaries of Theon on the classical and Hellenistic poets, the

etymological Homeric dictionary of Apion (also notorious for his attacks on Jews in

his Aegyptiaca), and the wide-ranging output of Seleucus Homericus. One of the

more original developments in scholarship was the systematic study of grammar and

the codification of language. Among the greatest and most influential exponents of

this trend must be counted Apollonius Dyscolus (the Surly) of the second century,

the first scholar to offer a systematic theory of syntax, and his son Herodian, who

produced an exhaustive treatment of Greek accentuation. A contemporary

Alexandrian, Hephaestion, who is perhaps identical to the homonymous teacher of the

emperor Lucius Verus (SHA Verus 2), wrote an extensive treatise on poetic metres.

Lexicography and interest in things Athenian represent another popular strand of the

scholarship of the time, which was partly motivated by the purist ambition of reviving

the Attic dialect and the culture and values of classical Athens. Pamphilus lexicon

has already been mentioned. In the late second century, Valerius Harpocration


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composed an alphabetically orderedLexicon of the Ten Orators, a work distinguished

by a wealth of historical details on fifth- and fourth-century Athens. This same

Harpocration may be attested in the above-quoted letter from Oxyrhynchus (P.Oxy.

2192) in company with another known Atticist lexicographer, Valerius Pollio. While

it is admittedly true that some of these scholars taught and lived in Rome, at least for

parts of their careers, it must be remembered that their intellectual nourishment and

rise to prominence occurred in Alexandria.

Naukratis, Alexandrias neighbour and the oldest Greek city in Egypt, boasted

its own luminaries (Schubert 1995). Iulius Pollux, who rose to obtain the prestigious

Imperial chair of rhetoric in Athens in 178, is known today chiefly for his

Onomasticon, a thematically ordered lexicon covering the terminology of a wide

range of learned and everyday spheres. His contemporary and compatriot Athenaeus

lived mostly in Rome, but he may have developed much of the dazzling erudition

displayed in his Deipnosophistae in Alexandria. This work in fifteen books purports

to report a series of dinner-party conversations among a group of learned banqueters,

who digress on a wide array of subjects, especially relating to food and drink, and

string together extensive quotations of ancient poets, historians, and scholars to

illustrate their points, making the Deipnosophistae a celebrated treasure-trove of

citations of lost works (Olson 200612).

In contrast to Naukratis, famous orators are noticeably lacking from

Alexandria. It has often been pointed out, for example, that no Alexandrian orators

are mentioned in Philostratus Lives of the Sophists as representatives of the Second

Sophistic. A students letter to his father complaining of a shortage ofsophistai in

this city (understood to be Alexandria) would seem to reinforce this view (SB XXII

15708). However, that same letter testifies that it was possible to hear declamations


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by professional orators in the city, and although no illustrious ones are known,

rhetorical education clearly flourished there (Schubert 1995: 1848; Cribiore 2001:

58). In the first or second century, Aelius Theon of Alexandria wrote a handbook of

rhetorical preliminary exercises as well as commentaries on the classical orators

(Patillon 1997), while the above-mentioned Aelius Sarapion made a name for himself

both as a practicing sophist and a theorist.

A distinctive literary genre that developed specifically in the Alexandrian

context was that of the so-called Acts of the Pagan Martyrs, also known as the Acta

Alexandrinorum (Musurillo 1954). This collective modern title refers to a series of

works of unknown authorship straddling the documentary and literary spheres and

preserved only through papyri. They present in the form of trial minutes (acta)

partly fictionalized and dramatized confrontations between distinguished

Alexandrians and hostile Roman emperors, usually in the setting of an embassy to the

imperial court or a trial before the emperor. The minutes involve brazen addresses

by Alexandrian noblemen to caricatured, tyrannical emperors, which often result in

the pathetic execution of the Alexandrian heroes. This literature is imbued with

Alexandrian patriotism and glorification of Alexandrias superior Hellenic culture; it

reflects in a distorted light the political tensions and civil disturbances of early Roman

Alexandria, especially in relation to the large Jewish community of the city. Their

survival through papyri in remote places like Fayum villages shows that these works

were not merely pamphlets illicitly circulating among disaffected members of

Alexandrian aristocratic clubs, but enjoyed a broad appeal among Hellenized elites

throughout the province, probably more because of their affirmation of Hellenic

identity, their entertainment value, and the provincials fascination with Alexandria

than for political or dissident reasons (so Harker 2008).


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25

At the other end of the spectrum, Greek literary and philosophical traditions

were also appropriated for the expression and interpretation of non-Greek ones. In the

first century, the Hellenized Egyptian priest Chaeremon, tutor of Nero, offered a Stoic

interpretation of Egyptian religion, while Philo developed a Platonic and allegorical

exegesis of the Old Testament. About a century later Clement and after him Origen

similarly produced a profound synthesis of Greek philosophy and Christian scripture.

These writers were thoroughly steeped in Greek literature and philosophy, even if at

times polemical toward them, and were all products of the rich and multifaceted

cultural milieu of Roman Alexandria.

[Sub-head level 1] Conclusion

When a boy in Roman Oxyrhynchus or Philadelphia began to trace painfully his first

Greek letters under the supervision of agrammatodidaskalos,there was little prospect

of his ending up as a member of the museum of Alexandria. Most of his peers would

not attain more than literacy and a rudimentary and partial knowledge of grammar and

the classics; but the competence in the normative language and the modicum of

literary culture such an education provided, together with certain institutional

elements and other cultural habits, would serve to distinguish them as members of a

relatively privileged Hellenic stratum of the population, whose corporate identity as

an elite was fostered by Roman rule. Whether middle-class scribes and administrators

scribbling lines of Homer on the margins of letters, wealthy magistrates in possession

of calligraphic bookrolls, or scholars exchanging obscure treatises, they shared in an

empire-wide culture engrossed by the classical Greek past and in a tradition that was

primarily literarily constructed. Because of its cultural prestige, Greek literature


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spread beyond this core group and penetrated even traditional Egyptian milieus such

as temples in villages of the Arsinoite nome.

While our picture of education and literary culture in the metropoleis is

informed by the randomly preserved papyri consumed by their inhabitants, for

Alexandria we must rely on the more selectively transmitted literary sources, which

inevitably focus on high literature and scholarship. They convey the impression of a

city striving to live up to its Ptolemaic cultural heritage, regardless of the precise fate

of its famous library and despite the undeniable shift of gravity to other cultural

centres such as Rome and Athens. Although it may not have distinguished itself in

Second Sophistic rhetoric then at the height of fashion, Roman Alexandria produced

some poets of note and a series of high-profile scholars who made pivotal

contributions in literary exegesis, grammar, and lexicography.

The intellectual splendour of Alexandria, however, should not obscure the fact

that many metropoleis were capable of catering for the minority who proceeded to

higher studies in poetry and rhetoric, whether institutionally through their public

grammarians (in Oxyrhynchus at least), gymnasia, theatres, and poetry contests, or

through the breadth of classical and contemporary literary works circulating in them.

Moreover, both metropolite elites completing their higher education in Alexandria

and the movement of books to and from the capital maintained a cultural bridge with

the metropoleis, ensuring that the latest literary tastes and scholarly trends in

Alexandriaand indirectly the wider empirepercolated to the rest of the province.

[Sub-head level 1] Suggested Reading

Swain (1996) and Whitmarsh (2001) provide theoretically informed discussions of the

central role of literature in the construction of Greek cultural identity in the Imperial


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period (not in specific relation to Egypt, however). Cribiore (2001) is an excellent and

accessible account of Greek education in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. The best

general introduction to literary papyri remains Turner (1980), to be supplemented

with the relevant chapters in Bagnall (2009). There are two indispensable electronic

databases of literary papyri: the Leuven Database of Ancient Books

(http://www.trismegistos.org/ldab/) and the Base de donnes M-P3 at the Centre de

Documentation de Papyrologie Littraire

(http://www.ulg.ac.be/facphl/services/cedopal/). For short discussions of most of the

above-mentioned scholars of Roman Alexandria and further bibliography, see Dickey

(2007), General Index. There is unfortunately no global account of the intellectual life

of Roman Alexandria similar to that of Fraser (1972) for Ptolemaic Alexandria.

[Sub-head level 1] Bibliography

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