7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
1/32
1
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
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
2/32
2
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
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
3/32
3
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
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
4/32
4
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
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
5/32
5
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
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
6/32
6
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.
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
7/32
7
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
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
8/32
8
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
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
9/32
9
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
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
10/32
10
(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.
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
11/32
11
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).
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
12/32
12
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
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
13/32
13
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
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
14/32
14
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
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
15/32
15
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
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
16/32
16
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
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
17/32
17
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).
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
18/32
18
[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
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
19/32
19
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,
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
20/32
20
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
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
21/32
21
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
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
22/32
22
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
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
23/32
23
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
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
24/32
24
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).
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
25/32
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
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
26/32
26
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
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
27/32
27
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
Amato, E. 2005. Dionisio di Alessandria: Descrizione della terra abitata. Milan:
Bompiani.
Bagnall, R. S. 1992. An owner of literary papyri, Classical Philology 87: 13740.
Bagnall, R. S. 2002. Alexandria: library of dreams, Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society 146: 34862.
Bagnall, R. S. (ed.) 2009. The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Bowman, A. K. 1986.Egypt after the Pharaohs, 332 BCAD 642: from Alexander to
the Arab conquest. London: British Museum.
Bowman, A. K. and D. Rathbone 1992. Cities and administration in Roman Egypt,
Journal of Roman Studies 82: 10727.
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
28/32
28
Bowman, A. K. et al. (eds) 2007. Oxyrhynchus: A City and its Texts. London: Egypt
Exploration Society.
Canfora, L. 1989. The Vanished Library. London: Hutchinson Radius.
Clarysse, W. 1983. Literary papyri in documentary archives, in E. vant Dack et
al. (eds),Egypt and the Hellenistic World: 4361. Leuven: Orientaliste.
Coles, R. 1975. The Naucratites and their ghost-names: P.Oxy. 2338 revised,
Zeitschrift fr Papyrologie und Epigraphik18: 199204.
Cribiore, R. 1996a. Writing, Teachers, and Students in Graeco-Roman Egypt. Atlanta:
Scholars Press.
Cribiore, R. 1996b. Gli esercizi scolastici dellEgitto Graeco-romano: Cultura
letteraria e cultural popolare nella scuola, in O. Pecere and A. Stramaglia (eds), La
letteratura di consumo nel mondo Graeco-latino. Cassino: Universit degli studi di
Cassino, 50528.
Cribiore, R. 2001. Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and
Roman Egypt. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Cribiore, R., P. Davoli, and D. M. Ratzan 2008. A teachers dipinto from Trimithis
(Dakhleh Oasis),Journal of Roman Archaeology 21: 17091.
Dickey, E. 2003. Latin influence on the Greek of documentary papyri: an analysis of
its chronological distribution,Zeitschrift fr Papyrologie und Epigraphik145: 249
57.
Dickey, E. 2007.Ancient Greek Scholarship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dickey, E. 2009. The Greek and Latin languages in the papyri, in Bagnall 2009:
14969.
Dorandi, T. 2000. Le stylet et la tablette: Dans le secret des auteurs antiques. Paris:
Belles Lettres.
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
29/32
29
el-Abbadi, M. 1990. The Life and Fate of the Ancient Library of Alexandria. Paris:
Unesco/UNDP.
Fein, S. 1994. Die Beziehungen der Kaiser Trajan und Hadrian zu den Litterati.
Stuttgart: Teubner.
Fraser, P. M. 1972.Ptolemaic Alexandria. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Funghi, M. S. and G. Messeri Savorelli 1992. Lo scriba di Pindaro e le biblioteche
di Ossirinco, Studi Classici e Orientali 42: 4362.
Gammacurta, T. 2006. Papyrologica scaenica: I copioni teatrali nella tradizione
papiracea. Alexandria: Edizioni dellOrso.
Garzya, A. 1984. Pankrates, in Atti del XVII Congresso Internazionale di
Papirologia. Naples: Centro Internazionale per lo Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi, 319
25.
Gignac, F. T. 19761981. A Grammar of the Greek Papyri of the Roman and
Byzantine Periods. Milan: Istituto editoriale Cisalpino - La Goliardica.
Gignac, F. T. 1985. The papyri and the Greek language, Yale Classical Studies 28:
15565.
Harker, A. 2008. Loyalty and Dissidence in Roman Egypt: The Case of the Acta
Alexandrinorum. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hatzilambrou, R. 2007. P.Oxy. XVIII 2192 revisited, in Bowman et al. 2007: 2826.
Houston, G. W. 2007. Grenfell, Hunt, Breccia, and the book collections of
Oxyrhynchus, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 47: 32759.
Houston, G. W. 2009. Papyrological evidence for book collections and libraries in
the Roman Empire, in W. A. Johnson and H. N. Parker (eds),Ancient Literacies: The
Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 23367.
Husson, G. 1993. Les homristes,Journal of Juristic Papyrology 23: 939.
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
30/32
30
Koenen, L. 2002. Die Apologie des Tpfers an Knig Amenophis oder das
Tpferorakel, in A. Blasius and B. U. Schipper (eds), Apokalyptik und gypten.
Leuven: Peeters, 13987.
Krger, J. 1990. Oxyrhynchos in der Kaiserzeit: Studien zur Topographie und
Literaturrezeption. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Lama, M. 1991. Aspetti di tecnica libraria ad Ossirinco: copie letterarie su rotoli
documentari,Aegyptus 71: 55120.
Lewis, N. 1995. Literati in the service of the Roman emperors: politics before
culture, in A. E. Hanson (ed.), On Government and Law in Roman Egypt: Collected
Papers of Naphthali Lewis. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 25774.
Livrea, E. 2002. Poema epico-storico attribuito a Soterico di Oasi, Zeitschrift fr
Papyrologie und Epigraphik138: 1730.
Maehler, H. 1998. lites urbaines et production littraire en gypte romaine et
byzantine, Gaia 3: 8195.
Migulez-Cavero, L. 2008.Poems in Context: Greek Poetry in the Egyptian Thebaid
200600 AD. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Montserrat, D. 1997. Heron bearer ofphilosophia and Hermione grammatike,
Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 83: 2236.
Morgan, T. 1998. Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Musurillo, H. 1954. The Acts of the Pagan Martyrs: Acta Alexandrinorum. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Olson, S. D. 20062012. Athenaeus: The Learned Banqueters, 8 vols. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press.
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
31/32
31
Parsons, P. J. 2007. The City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish: Greek Lives in Roman Egypt.
London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Patillon, M. 1997.Aelius Thon: Progymnasmata. Paris: Belles Lettres.
Porter, S. E. 2007. Prolegomena to a syntax of the Greek papyri, in J. Frsn et al.
(eds), Proceedings of the 24th International Congress of Papyrology. Helsinki:
Societas Scientarum Fennica, 92133.
Pruneti, P. 1996. Il termine nei papiri documentari, in M. S. Funghi
(ed.), Le vie della ricerca: Studi in onore di Francesco Adorno. Florence: Leo S.
Olschki, 389401.
Quack, J. 2009. Einfhrung in die altgyptische Literaturgeschichte III. Die
demotische und grko-gyptische Literatur, 2nd ed. Berlin: Lit.
Reardon, B. P. 1971. Courants littraires grecs des IIe et IIIe sicles aprs J.-C. Paris:
Belles Lettres.
Schubert, P. 1995. Philostrate et les sophistes dAlexandrie, Mnemosyne 48: 178
88.
Stephens, S. A. and J. Winkler 1995. Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Swain, S. 1996. Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism, and Power in the
Greek World AD 50250. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Turner, E. G. 1980. Greek Papyri: An Introduction, 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Turner, E. G. 2007. Oxyrhynchus and Rome, in Bowman et al. 2007: 15570.
van Minnen, P. 1998. Boorish or bookish? Literature in Egyptian villages in the
Fayum in the Graeco-Roman period,Journal of Juristic Papyrology 28: 99184.
van Minnen, P. and K. A. Worp 1993. The Greek and Latin literary texts from
Hermopolis, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 34: 15186.
7/30/2019 OHRE Chapter 32-Chapter32Teachingin Small Village
32/32
West, S. 1969. The Greek version of the legend of Tefnut, Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology 55: 16183.
Whitmarsh, T. 2001. Greek Literature and the Roman Empire: The Politics of
Imitation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Willis, W. H. 1968. A census of the literary papyri from Egypt, Greek, Roman, and
Byzantine Studies 9: 20541.
Youtie, H. C. 1970. Callimachus in the tax rolls, in D. H. Samuel (ed.),Proceedings
of the Twelfth International Congress of Papyrology. Toronto: Hakkert, 54551.
Top Related