BL 3124 (TM 397934) is a, so far, unique papyrus containing a bilingual, ‘Latin’–Arabic, private letter entirely written in Latin script. The first six lines of the letter itself are in a form of Late Latin/Proto-Romance, while the rest of the text is in Arabic. The first editors dated this document between the end of the seventh and the ninth century and considered it as possible evidence for the existence of Latin-speaking communities in the Near East at the time. This chapter shows that important linguistic and palaeographical features of the letter link both the language of its ‘Latin’ section and its script to Italy and argues that it provides a potential very early document of the evolution of Italian vernacular, as well as suggesting connections between the peninsula and the Near East in this period.

The recto of Hamburg papyrus II 167, dated to the late first century CE, presents an intriguing case study of a text that has so far resisted generic classification. Rhetorical declamation and theatre (fabula togata/mime) are the two literary categories for which scholars have argued most strongly in their attempt to explain the papyrus and understand the story it presents – a conversation between characters with historically attested names involving a journey and family-related motifs, such as a husband’s faithlessness, a father-in-law, and a restored marital relationship: the text gives the impression of a ‘theatricalised’ novelistic tale. The difficulty in reaching consensus on the matter is only partly due to the lacunose state of the papyrus. This chapter favours the interpretation of the text as a theatrical script (an extract from a mime, perhaps written in prose, rather than a fragment from a literary fabula togata), but also points out the unique (dramaturgical, lexical, thematic, and visual) features of the text that challenge our assumptions about viewing Latin theatrical genres as forms of entertainment with fixed and rigid boundaries and about imagining how Latin literature was performed and circulated in antiquity.

This chapter attempts to reconstruct the textual history of the Latin–Greek glossary known as Hermeneumata Celtis, from antiquity to the year 1495, when the Humanist Conrad Celtis transcribed the work from a medieval antigraph that was subsequently lost. The thematic glossary of Hermeneumata Celtis is unique among other extant bilingual glossaries because it was supplemented, at some time in Late Antiquity, with the inclusion of Greek words and definitions culled from a Greek alphabetical lexicon similar to Hesychius (but possibly earlier). Other increments came from contamination with other thematic glossaries; the most recognisable points of contact are with what modern scholars call the Hermeneumata Montepessulana.

The initial editions and, more importantly, the first reproductions of the few extant Latin papyri introduced a novel approach to our understanding of writing and provided new interpretative tools that generally remain relevant well beyond the Roman period. This brief reflection discusses several technical terms used to describe significant graphic features from the Roman era. The author maintains that a specialised vocabulary – essential in any discipline aspiring to scientific rigour, such as palaeography – is both a fundamental tool and a product of a systematic methodology and critical analysis.

Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians contains instruction for women to veil their heads when praying or prophesying in the assembly (ekklēsia). In this chapter, I argue that, like other women in the first-century Mediterranean world, Corinthian women most likely veiled and unveiled for a variety of reasons having to do with beauty, comfort, status, virtue, and piety, not solely for theological, exegetical, or liberative purposes.

The third-century Christian writer Origen of Alexandria used the image of the veil to describe the relation between the “letter” of the biblical text and its hidden, spiritual meaning. Origen constructed an allegorical theory of biblical interpretation that relied on the imagery of the veil to illustrate the hiddenness of truth. His biblical interpretations consistently privileged the unveiled Christian “spirit” of the text over what he called the Jewish “letter” – the veiled “flesh” of the text.