Variations of the First Person: Looking at the Greek private letters of Ptolemaic Egypt

This paper aims at describing the circumstances under which first-person plural markers can replace singular forms in the Greek private correspondence of Ptolemaic Egypt, where the use of the plural (as well as the singular) for the sender is not uncommon, and number variations of the first person can then appear without grounds. Thus, apart from documents in which the author consistently presents himself using the singular or the plural, the study focuses on a selection of letters featuring shifts from singular to plural (and from plural to singular) in the sender’s self-reference. The analysis singles out some textual parameters to which number alternations seem to be sensitive, shedding also light on the process of identity construction in the addresser (sender)/addressee (recipient) linguistic interaction.