Dative for accusative case interchange in epistolary formulas in Greek papyrus letters

Greek papyrus letters preserve not only instances of the replacement of the dative case; they also show the use of the dative instead of the accusative case as direct object and disjoint infinitival subject. This interchange is mostly found in epistolary phrases, namely the salutation formula (ἀσπάζομαί σε) and the initial (εὔχομαί σε ὑγιαίνειν) and final (ἐρρῶσθαί σε εὔχομαι) health wishes. The phonetic similarity of the pronouns might have created the circumstances for case confusion. Contamination of the constructions reflects the difficulties of the scribes to construct conservative epistolary phrases and, thereby, diachronic phraseological variation might reflect language change. In salutation formulas, the use of a dative Addressee could be explained by analogical overextension from the category of communication verbs taking a dative complement. The decline of the accusative and infinitive construction might be one of the reasons why the accusative disjoint infinitival subject is replaced by the dative case in health wishes

Three new letters in the Thermouthas dossier

In the present case study, I will discuss the so-called 'dossier of Thermouthas'. It currently consists of six private letters, but I will argue in favor of the addition of three more letters to this collection: viz. P. Mich. VIII 464 (TM 17238), P. Col. VIII 215 (TM 17627) and P. Corn. 49 (TM 25711). My hypothesis is based on both internal arguments (linguistic and content related elements) and external ones (e.g. museum archaeology, onomastics and prosopography). This paper illustrates how idiolectic features and the close linguistic investigation of the letters' phraseology can help the scholar reunite papyri in their original context. It refines the date of P. Corn. 49 and shows that some of the documents in this collection were preserved as an (archaeological) archive

Variation in Private Letters: The Papyri of the Apollonios <i>Strategos</i> Archive

The epistolary formulas used by writers in this second-century archive exhibit differences from standard usages that are revealing of individual relations and attitudes.</p

‘I am fine!’ Information about the Sender's Health in the Greek Private Letters of the Roman Period

The epistolary practice of giving information about one’s own well-being was common in the Ptolemaic Greek private letters: such a formula appeared in combination with the wish for the addressee’s health. In the Roman period, a new health wish arose in the Greek private letters, and the combination of this new formula valetudinis and the information about the sender’s health became rather rare (only about twenty occurrences). Such attestation often appear in letters of a Latin environment, for example letters written in Italy , letters from soldiers, or letters from areas in which the Romans were very active, like Eastern Desert. Given that the practice of giving information about one’s own well-being was common in Latin letters from the Roman period, I argue in this paper that the relative absence of this topos in Greek letters from Roman times is due to Latin influence