Greek presence and knowledge in Roman North Africa: a case study of Thugga

This paper focuses on three Greek funerary epigrams emerged in the region of Dougga (ancient Thugga, 100 km a Sud-Est di Cartagine). A palaeographic, philological and linguistic analysis of these epigrams as well as a contextualization of the data emerging from them will be proposed. These texts represent the only Greek epitaphs found in and around the site which has provided an extensive corpus of more than 1750 Latin epitaphs. They add some significant clues to our knowledge of the variegated linguistic mosaic of ancient North Africa, showing a society where first-language speakers of Greek, immigrants or their descendants, attached to their native identity, lived side-by-side and interacted with the local (Lybian and Punic) upper middle class, educated to the Latin official culture and language, but also proficient or at least experienced in scholastic Greek