Multilingualism in the Graeco-Roman Worlds

Through words and images employed both by individuals and by a range of communities across the Graeco-Roman worlds, this book explores the complexity of multilingual representations of identity. Starting with the advent of literacy in the Mediterranean, it encompasses not just the Greek and Roman empires but also the transformation of the Graeco-Roman world under Islam and within the medieval mind. By treating a range of materials, contexts, languages, and temporal and political boundaries, the contributors consider points of cross-cultural similarity and difference and the changing linguistic landscape of East and West from antiquity into the medieval period. Insights from contemporary multilingualism theory and interdisciplinary perspectives are employed throughout to exploit the material fully.1. Introduction: multiple languages, multiple identities Alex Mullen; 2. Language maintenance and language shift in the Mediterranean world during the Roman Empire James Clackson; 3. Why did Coptic fail where Aramaic succeeded? Linguistic development in Egypt and the Near East after the Arab conquest Arietta Papaconstantinou; 4. Language contact in the pre-Roman and Roman Iberian peninsula: direct and indirect evidence Oliver Simkin; 5. Complaints of the natives in a Greek dress: the Zenon Archive and the problem of Egyptian interference Trevor Evans; 6. Linguae sacrae in ancient and medieval sources: an anthropological approach to ritual language Alderik Blom; 7. Typologies of translation techniques in Greek and Latin David Langslow; 8. Greek in early medieval Ireland Padraic Moran; 9. An habes linguam Latinam? Non tam bene sapio: views of multilingualism from the early medieval West Paul Russell; 10. Towards an archaeology of bilingualism: on the study of Greek-Coptic education in late antique Egypt Scott Bucking; 11. Neo-Punic and Latin inscriptions in Roman North Africa: function and display Andrew Wilson; 12. Cultures as languages and languages as cultures Robin Osborne.