Armenian

Recognizing Hellenism and Greek as the hemispherically dominant culture and language of late antiquity, this chapter applies a dynamic model to chart the incremental Armenian reception of such trends over the fifth–eighth centuries. Acknowledging the contemporary affinity between elite literacy and Christianity’s regional integration, it analyses the resulting bifurcation in Armenian society and literature whereby Persianate aristocratic epic persists in an oral verse repertoire, while the novel written medium largely in prose propagated by a new literate class not only appropriates all the ecclesiastical genres but reconceptualizes the Armenian worldview within a Christian dispensation from a Greek cultural ethos. Adopting the trivium and quadrivium from Antioch and Alexandria, scholars replicate lay schools in Armenia and contribute to those disciplines by their commentaries. Elaborating an indigenous theological literature in continuity with Syria and Egypt, Armenians defend it in dialogue with Constantinople as the eastern Mediterranean littoral enters into the Umayyad Caliphate.

Punic

This chapter focuses on the Punic literature of the Roman imperial period. Since Punic works have not survived from either the Punic city or the Roman city, investigations on Punic literature can only be based on indirect testimonies—including Neo-Punic epigraphy, a temporary survival of the Neo-Punic language and writing, and fragments in translation attributed to Mago the agronomist—or on a cautious assessment of the cultural mood in the Punic city and the role the neighbouring Numidian population may have played in the conservation of the Punic literary output. From this viewpoint, the fate meted out in 146 bce, just after the fall of Carthage, by the Roman Senate to the Agronomic Treatise written by Mago in Punic and to the libri Punici most probably written in Greek is worth special attention because these works could have been one of the stimuli for the Graeco-Latin literature that flourished in Roman Africa right up to the late imperial period. As for other writings in Punic, kept in the archives of Carthage in Punic times, they probably served primarily to preserve traditional knowledge. The contents and the long and turbulent history of the handwritten archives assembled much later in Timbuktu and elsewhere in Mali provide a glimpse into the diversity of topics treated in the Punic language and writing by Carthaginians who lived before 146 bce. As for the Roman city, there is nothing tangible that would support the idea of a ‘renaissance’ in Punic literary output.

Thracian

This chapter focuses on the Thracians. The Thracians did not have a written tradition. This detail may be considered either normal, as most ethnic groups of antiquity did not use writing as means of communication; or it may be considered somewhat unexpected, given the proximity of the Thracians to the Greeks and later the Romans of the Empire. Nevertheless, one can work out a quite comprehensive list of Thracian words. The Thracian forms are gleaned from various sources, often with approximate spellings and therefore with a high probability of being misread or misinterpreted. The chapter then looks at Thracian religion, one of the striking features of which is aniconism. Also striking is the peculiar representation of the supreme god, Zalmoxis, also spelled Zamolxis. There is no visual representation of this god or other Thracian gods of ‘classical’ Thracian society. Some Thracian groups adopted Roman ways of life and others resisted into the fourth century. This may have some bearing on the two dialects in modern Albanian—Romanian, Bulgarian, and Albanian being the main heirs of the Thracians—but this is a matter of debate.

Nabataean

Located on the eastern periphery of the Roman Empire, the Nabataean client-kingdom played an important role in regional politics and international trade, but it is primarily known from Greek and Latin writers, of whom Josephus is of primary importance. What can be postulated about any native literature has to be culled from a variety of sources, including treatises on Arabika that survive only in fragments, a rather large corpus of Nabataean Aramaic inscriptions, and papyri. They provide glimpses at least of possible ethnographical, mythological, legal, and religious works. In particular, inscriptions and papyri refer to archives, and are saturated with Arabic loanwords implying this was the private or native Nabataean language. Nabataean religious festivals and activities were organized around a lunar calendar, preserved in a few zodiac representations, with well-regulated pilgrimages and related activities, suggesting records and texts were preserved in temple archives.

Celtic

Greek and Roman ethnographic writers provide information about the bardic poets of Cisalpine Gaul and Transalpine Gaul, as well as the character of their poetry. Among the fragmentary epigraphic records of the Cisalpine Celtic and Transalpine Celtic languages, furthermore, a number have been claimed to display poetic features such as alliteration, rhyme, and non-standard word order. The poetic features of two inscriptions whose status as poems can hardly be doubted are discussed.

Greek

This article offers an overview of Greek literature of the Roman Empire. The first section discusses ways in which Greek writing responds to Roman rule. This section ranges widely and takes snapshots from six writers—Artemidorus, Plutarch, Lucian, Basil of Caesarea, Galen, and Josephus—from which to show the complexities involved in thinking about Greek literature and its attendant critical issues, including how we might read ‘resistance’ and how Hellenisms relate to Christianities, and Jewish and other identities. The second section focuses more closely on Greek poetry and pantomime, and the third section on the romance novels and Greek prose fiction, including a brief look at a couple of texts that possibly show Egyptian influences.

Against Roman Rule

This article examines certain types of narrative from rabbinical sources and how they relate both to forms of social life and to expectations of Greco-Roman narrative, genre, and normativity. It situates them within the context of the writings of Hellenistic Judaism and to the adoption of Greco-Roman models by what becomes the dominant religious authority of the Christians. It also explores the particularity of the textual world of the Talmud as an issue of the construction and performance of subjectivity and concludes by highlighting the importance of the connection between narrative and lived experience for rabbinical writing and for the construction of the subject’s positionality within it. It argues that the Talmud reveals a defeated national group reforming its community in interaction with—and often in fierce and fearful contention with and gestures of separation from—dominant Greco-Roman culture, and from other Jews, more assimilated to that dominant culture.

Literacy

The Roman world was characterized by a diversity of literacies. These were stratified by class and partitioned by language. In this chapter, I give a conspectus of the many social functions that these various literacies exercised in everyday life, as well as a sense of the technical and educational apparatus through which individuals acquired and exercised literacy. I discuss the important and ambiguous role of the scribe as professionally literate in a society where literacy did not always confer status. Finally, I argue that these various literacies form a system that helps justify our speaking of the literatures of the Roman World as one entity.

Languages of the Iberian Peninsula

Writing appeared in the Iberian Peninsula no later than the seventh century bce as an adaptation of Phoenician script, from which the Palaeohispanic scripts developed as a series of variants. These variants correspond to the linguistic and social particularities of diverse Palaeohispanic communities, notably the Tartessians, the Iberians, and the Celtiberians. The Roman occupation influenced the development of local inscriptions, some of which appeared for the first time at this moment, and in the case of the Lusitanians were only ever written in the Latin alphabet. Epigraphic evidence provides information about little understood aspects of indigenous literatures and cultures, in particular that of the Turdetanians, who followed on from the Tartessians. Limited data regarding Latin literature produced in Hispania (the Roman designation for the Iberian peninsula) by Hispanic peoples, in contrast to that of Hispanic writers active in Rome, do not allow for detailed assessment of the pre-Roman tradition.

Pahlavi

This chapter offers an overview of Pahlavi literature. It surveys a wide variety of genres and texts, which were composed in the form that has reached us mainly in the ninth and tenth century, though some of the works and many of the themes date back to the Sasanian period and even earlier. Much of this literature was composed by Zoroastrians in Iran, and the chapter looks at the Zoroastrian contexts of literary production. Important texts such as the Dēnkard and the Bundahišn are discussed at length. The chapter also examines non-religious literature and other literary traditions with which Pahlavi authors came into contact. No doubt a large part of Sasanian non-religious literature was translated into Arabic and later also into Persian, contributing to the blossoming of Islamic culture.