This book employs new interdisciplinary approaches to understand multilingualism in the Graeco-Roman worlds, East and West, Classical and medieval.

1. Introduction: multiple languages, multiple identities Alex Mullen; 2. Language maintenance and language shift in the Mediterranean world during the Roman Empire James Clackson; 3. Why did Coptic fail where Aramaic succeeded? Linguistic development in Egypt and the Near East after the Arab conquest Arietta Papaconstantinou; 4. Language contact in the pre-Roman and Roman Iberian peninsula: direct and indirect evidence Oliver Simkin; 5. Complaints of the natives in a Greek dress: the Zenon Archive and the problem of Egyptian interference Trevor Evans; 6. Linguae sacrae in ancient and medieval sources: an anthropological approach to ritual language Alderik Blom; 7. Typologies of translation techniques in Greek and Latin David Langslow; 8. Greek in early medieval Ireland Pádraic Moran; 9. An habes linguam Latinam? Non tam bene sapio: views of multilingualism from the early medieval West Paul Russell; 10. Towards an archaeology of bilingualism: on the study of Greek-Coptic education in late antique Egypt Scott Bucking; 11. Neo-Punic and Latin inscriptions in Roman North Africa: function and display Andrew Wilson; 12. Cultures as languages and languages as cultures Robin Osborne.