04-16-2014, 10:38 AM
I don't know anything like enough about Roman Egypt's military organisation to *suggest* anything, I'm just reading the Greek guys.
I haven't seen the other papyri, so I don't know what relationship they have to one another but iougouloi alone should make us pause, that is very variant from the others. Although I haven't seen this pap so it could be a mistake like igouloi. I mean you can argue that it would be voiced rather similar but it defies the orthographic conventions of Latin and Roman Greek. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, when it comes to papyri I've seen it all: π for β, μ for ν and so on but judging from the orthography and accentuation of the rest of the papyrus as it has been transcribed the speaker was obviously learned.
So the vigiles might be a stretch, I mean cf is to vigouloi. You have not just the wrong kind of vowel but a diphthong here. Moreover it belongs to the wrong noun class. Greek of the era interacts with Latin in predictable ways, especially when it comes to forming nouns and Greek could have happily used a noun formation that rendered it closer to the original.
I'm not discounting it, just being cautious as usual.
I haven't seen the other papyri, so I don't know what relationship they have to one another but iougouloi alone should make us pause, that is very variant from the others. Although I haven't seen this pap so it could be a mistake like igouloi. I mean you can argue that it would be voiced rather similar but it defies the orthographic conventions of Latin and Roman Greek. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, when it comes to papyri I've seen it all: π for β, μ for ν and so on but judging from the orthography and accentuation of the rest of the papyrus as it has been transcribed the speaker was obviously learned.
So the vigiles might be a stretch, I mean cf is to vigouloi. You have not just the wrong kind of vowel but a diphthong here. Moreover it belongs to the wrong noun class. Greek of the era interacts with Latin in predictable ways, especially when it comes to forming nouns and Greek could have happily used a noun formation that rendered it closer to the original.
I'm not discounting it, just being cautious as usual.
Jass
