Ancient Egyptian Soldier's Letter Home Deciphered

[BaalsTears]

This guy wasn't from Rome. He was from Egypt.

Identity is more than a question of location. Lineage and loyalty enter the equation. For example, the residents of Gibraltar think of themselves as British, not Spanish.

Why was Greek used?

Probably because Alexander the Macedonian conquered Egypt and his general Ptolemy and successors ruled it until annexation to the Roman Empire.

 

[Sal]

At the height of the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire, the Roman educational system gradually found its final form. Formal schools were established, which served paying students; very little that could be described as free public education existed.[2] Both boys and girls were educated, though not necessarily together.[2]
Following various military conquests in the Greek East, Romans adapted a number of Greek educational precepts to their own fledgling system.[3] Roman students were taught (especially at the elementary level) in similar fashion to Greek students, sometimes by Greek slaves who had a penchant for education.[2] But differences between the Greek and Roman systems emerge at the highest tiers of education. Roman students that wished to pursue the highest levels of education went to Greece to study philosophy, as the Roman system developed to teach speech, law and gravitas.
In a system much like the one that predominates in the modern world, the Roman education system that developed arranged schools in tiers

 

[Goober]

Identity is more than a question of location. Lineage and loyalty enter the equation. For example, the residents of Gibraltar think of themselves as British, not Spanish.



Probably because Alexander the Macedonian conquered Egypt and his general Ptolemy and successors ruled it until annexation to the Roman Empire.

One point yes - In Egypt at that time. Latin and Greek were the dominant languages - the other is Greek was widely used within the Roman Empire.

 

[BaalsTears]

One point yes - In Egypt at that time. Latin and Greek were the dominant languages - the other is Greek was widely used within the Roman Empire.

Yup, that's true. The Greeks spread far and wide, and their language became entrenched in much of the Mediterranean world. The Greeks even colonized parts of the Italian Peninsula and Sicily before the rise of Rome.