‘Dull, plodding, pedantic – much like yourself’. Late Latin Letters in Egyptian Documents

Key Points

• The aim is to analyze Latin letters produced in Late Antique Egypt to understand their context and quality.
• Examine approximately fifteen Latin texts from Late Antique Egypt.
• Contextualize these texts within late Latin epistolography.
• Analyze mistakes in orthography, morphology, and syntax.
• Identified significant errors in orthography, morphology, and syntax.
• Findings suggest scribes were partially literate in Latin and relied on companions or resources.
• Demonstrated the influence of Asianism in Latin literature and chancery style.

Abstract