Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

egypt 621
Fig. 19 Relief from the upper half of a limestone grave-marker showing a bearded monk with hands
raised in prayer. Saqqara, sixth or seventh century a.d. Dumbarton Oaks bl-270. (Photo: courtesy of
Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC)
– were Sahidic-speaking Copts. The second of these, Shenoute, exhibited
in his day a virulent antipathy toward ‘Hellenes’, that is, Hellenized
Egyptians of the upper classes, who would have included in their numbers
imperial bureaucrats like Theodore. 34 Moreover, Theodore’s will was not
only in Greek, but in a very florid Greek. This floridity, construed by earlier
scholars as a mark of pomposity and extravagance, servility and degeneracy,
is nowadays more likely to be seen as an artful and purposeful extension of
the classical rhetorical tradition. 35 Part of the training behind such exercises
in the writing of Greek, especially when connected with the study of law,
entailed the study of Latin even when it was no longer strictly required.
A natural result was the proliferation of Latin loanwords in late Greek
documents from Egypt. 36 One interesting example in Theodore’s will is
sta* blon, Latin stabulum. It will be recalled that Theodore’s house in
34 Cf. Trimbie (1986) 268. 35 MacCoull, Dioscorus, esp. ch. 2; Kovelman (1991).
36 Maas, John Lydus 13, 25, 27, 29–30 and passim. Loanwords: Daris (1991).
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