‘Households as Communities? Oikoi and poleis in Byzantine Egypt’, in: Onno M. van Nijf & Richard...

POLITICAL CULTURE IN THE GREEK CITYAFTER THE CLASSICAL AGE

edited by

Onno M. van Nijf & Richard Alstonwith the assistance of C.G. Williamson

PEETERSLEUVEN – PARIS – WALPOLE, MA

2011

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations .................................................................................... vii

Preface ....................................................................................................... ix

Contributors .............................................................................................. xi

Political culture in the Greek city after the classical age: intro-duction and preview .......................................................................... 1 Onno M. van Nijf and Richard Alston

Chapter 1. ‘Ils étaient dans la ville, mais tout à fait en dehors dela cité.’ Status and identity in private religious associations inHellenistic Athens ............................................................................. 27 Ilias Arnaoutoglou

Chapter 2. Where the Non-Delians met in Delos. The meeting-placesof foreign associations and ethnic communities in Late HellenisticDelos ................................................................................................. 49 Monika Trümper

Chapter 3. Ethnic minorities in Hellenistic Egypt ........................... 101 Dorothy J. Thompson

Chapter 4. Money for the polis. Public administration of privatedonations in Hellenistic Greece ........................................................ 119 Kaja Harter-Uibopuu

Chapter 5. Kings and cities in the Hellenistic Age .......................... 141 Rolf Strootman

Chapter 6. Pride and participation. Political practice, euergetism,and oligarchisation in the Hellenistic polis ....................................... 155 Edward Ch. L. van der Vliet

Chapter 7. Oligarchs and benefactors. Elite demography andeuergetism in the Greek east of the Roman Empire ......................... 185 Arjan Zuiderhoek

Chapter 8. Reconstructing the political life and culture of theGreek cities of the Roman Empire .................................................... 197 Giovanni Salmeri

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VI contents

Chapter 9. Public space and the political culture of Roman Ter-messos ............................................................................................... 215 Onno M. van Nijf

Chapter 10. The councillor’s dilemma. Political culture in third-century Roman Egypt ....................................................................... 243 Laurens E. Tacoma

Chapter 11. Households as communities? Oikoi and poleis in LateAntique and Byzantine Egypt ........................................................... 263 Roberta Mazza

Chapter 12. The oikoi and civic government in Egypt in the fifthand sixth centuries ............................................................................. 287 James Tuck

Epilogue: Post-politics and the ancient Greek City .......................... 307 Richard Alston

Index Locorum .................................................................................. 337

Index .................................................................................................. 344

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Th is paper was submitted in 2004, and therefore does not taken into account publica-tions wich have appeared aft er this time.

1 Th esaurus Graecae Linguae ab Henrico Stephano Constructus, V, Paris 1842-1846, coll. 1795-1797.

2 Papyrologists usually defi ne the Byzantine period as starting with the reign of Diocle-tian and ending with the Arab conquest. Aft er the publication of an article by Andrea Giar-dina (1989), scholars began to divide this span of time into two phases: the fourth and fi ft h centuries are more or less the Late Antique phase, and the sixth and seventh centuries (till the Arab conquest) are the Byzantine phase. Periodization, however, depends on points of view: from a mere cultural point of view, I personally think that ‘Late Antique’ is more appropriate than ‘Byzantine’ for the whole period, since I am quite convinced that the Med-iterranean world in the aforesaid centuries was a cultural unit, in spite of the diff erent polit-ical entities and regional cultural traditions which coexist in the area. For this period, Byz-antine seems to me more useful when denoting the political dependence on Constantinople. So in this paper I will use both adjectives indiff erently. On this topic see Bagnall 2003.

3 Gascou 1985, 4.

HOUSEHOLDS AS COMMUNITIES? OIKOI AND POLEIS IN LATE ANTIQUE AND BYZANTINE EGYPT

Roberta Mazza

1 Introduction

As is widely known, the Greek word oikos corresponded more or less with both the Latin words familia and domus: family in a very wide sense, with all the properties and people related to it. While Italian and other Romance languages do not have a precise word to translate ‘oikos’, the English ‘household’ is more or less synonymous with it. Actually, the word oikos is polysemic: it refers to the house as a building, to the house as a family composed both of persons and their patrimonium, and to the household as an institution. It can also signify a family in the sense of a dynasty. Moreover, it can even comprehend all these meanings at the same time.1

Keeping in mind this range of meanings, the word has also been used in more technical contexts during its long history. Papyrologists and his-torians of Late Antique and Byzantine Egypt2 usually fi nd oikos attested in papyri with a very specifi c meaning. In his long and important article on large estates in Byzantine Egypt, Jean Gascou writes:

La grande propriété foncière, donnée permanente de l’histoire agraire de l’Égypte gréco-romaine, s’observe avec une particulière netteté à compter de la fi n du Ve siècle. Une bonne part des rapports sociaux s’organise alors autours d’appareils administratif domaniaux appelés oikoi.3

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4 In the Corpus Iuris Civilis the imperial houses are oft en defi ned also as basilikoi oikoi.

5 Defi ned also as agiotatoi, sebasmioi and ieroi in the Corpus Iuris Civilis.6 Rémondon 1974, 367–372.

Aft er this statement, the author reports the distinction, in Egypt as everywhere in the Empire, among theioi or theiotatoi oikoi, euageis oikoi and endoxoi oikoi, i.e. respectively: oikoi owned by the emperors and their relatives,4 oikoi owned by the church (in a larger sense),5 and oikoi owned by senators and elite members. In his essay, the French papyrologist goes on to assume that oikoi were perceived mainly as fi scal subjects. He bases his theory that oikoi were semi-public institutions largely on R. Rémon-don’s latest studies on Byzantine Egypt, which is clear from Rémondon’s statements including: “Le domaine est une enterprise économique. Mais il est aussi une institution.”6

Since the second workshop of the international research project Th e Greek city aft er the clasical age was intended to analyse communities within the postclassical Greek polis, I was asked to investigate if the model ‘community’ should be applied to Byzantine Egyptian oikoi. Th erefore, I asked the question what a community is and, above all, if such a sociological model could be applied to ‘houses’ (oikoi). As we have just seen, Late Antique and Byzantine sources claim that there were imperial, ecclesiastical, and aristocratic houses, but if we analyse these sources as well as the modern bibliography on the topic, we immediately realize that a clear and unambiguous defi nition of what a ‘house’ was is still lacking. Th at lack is the refl ection of the multiple functions and manifold nature of this ‘entity’. I will begin with a short introduction presenting the modern debate on Byzantine oikoi and the modern debate on community (and communitarianism) –with particular attention to ancient historians’ reception of this sociological topic–, aiming to come, at the end of the study, to a better understanding of Byzantine Egyptian households in the light of the social, political, and economical network in which they operated.

If we start our research by considering the bibliography on oikoi, we notice that it commonly deals with the problem of large estates. Th is is clear not only from Gascou’s and Rémondon’s statements just quoted, which connected ‘houses’ with “la grand propriété foncière”, but also from previous studies dealing with the topic. E.R. Hardy stated:

It is doubtful whether a certain group of Oxyrhynchus documents refer to private estates or to administrative divisions. Th e series in question speaks of various ‘houses’ in connection with the government of the nome.


households as communities? 265

7 Hardy 1931, 47 and 48.8 Jones 1964, chapter XX ‘Th e Land’, esp. 780ff .9 Stein 1949, cf. for instance 476ff on Strategios II and his son Apion II.10 Banaji 2001.11 Banaji 2001, 176.12 Banaji 2001, 254.13 Mazza 2001.

Th en on page 48 he continued: It must be remarked that the word oikos did not refer to a family, but to a fi nancial administration; thus the divine house was not the dynasty but the imperial estate offi ce.7

As in Remondon’s and Gascou’s defi nitions, the word implied to the scholar both the possession of large estates and the administration not only of the land itself but also of some local civic institutions.

More general works on Late Antiquity, such as Jones’ Later Roman Empire and Stein’s Histoire de Bas Empire, tackled the topic of private large estates in a wider context, since the authors collected data coming from very diff erent territories of the Mediterranean world. Moreover, Jones and Stein interpreted the data relating to the Apions’ oikos in Egypt in a rather diff erent way. Jones was among the fi rst historians to use the Apion’s papyri from Oxyrhynchus as an important source for the economic his-tory of the Late Antique eastern empire;8 Stein dedicated special attention to the most eminent members of the family.9

Considering more recent books on Egyptian oikoi, Jairus Banaji seems to use the word oikos to denote large estates, i.e. as a synonym of ousia.10 Th e author considers Egyptian Byzantine oikoi as large estates, described as an “agglomeration of compact settlements subject to a common management.”11 In the glossary appended to the book, Banaji gives this short defi nition:

oikos (Gk. oikos) lit. ‘household’, usually of the big aristocratic families and their estates, hence ‘house’ in the sense of ‘house of the Apions’; cf. Cohen, Athenian Economy and Society, 84 ff . for its complex classical meaning.12

Finally, I did not defi ne this ‘entity’ in my book on the Apions’ archives, but simply assumed that the word oikos indicates something close to household.13

In fact the term oikos for large estates, or more precisely for the whole properties of a private individual or an institution, occurs not only in late antique sources, but also in some Ptolemaic and Roman documents. Th ere is evidence for oikoi belonging to the cities, such as Alexandria, Rhodes,


266 roberta mazza

14 Documents recently discussed by Capponi (2004 and 2005, 113-118).15 Actually they did not use this label, which was given to them by others, mostly crit-

ics on their positions. On the debate see Mulhall and Swift 1992; Bell 2005. For a short overview on communitarianism and communitarians see also the entries devoted to ‘Com-munitarianism’ written by A. Etzioni (2006 and 2003). Etzioni is an eminent exponent of a second-wave of 1990s communitarians, who mostly concentrate their action on the fi eld of the politics of the community.

and Antinoe, and for oikoi belonging to individuals appearing in a few Ptolemaic sources.14

As attested by the modern bibliography and also considered by the papyri I will discuss in the following pages, oikoi were great patrimonia of diff erent sizes and importance conceived of as an economic and fi scal unit by their owners and by the State. Of course, a subject can acquire diff erent meanings depending on the point of view of the observer. So if one considers the oikoi’s fi scal duties and administrative roles, Gascou’s statements that they were semi-public institutions could be accepted; but I wonder if these duties and roles were more simply connected with the undoubted nature of ancient economic enterprise that oikoi had, as openly stated in Rémondon’s defi nition mentioned above. Actually, as I will try to show, the oikoi were the greatest and most complex economic fi rms of the time, and, as always happens in history, they were both important fi scal contributors and enterprises deeply involved in the political and socio-economical life of the Empire.

What is a community? Th is term, apparently simple and familiar to everyone, currently has a very specifi c meaning if applied to sociological, philosophical, and political fi elds. In everyday language the substantive is usually linked to an adjective: there are religious communities, political communities, ethnic communities, and so on. Broadly speaking, one can state that a community is a group of individuals held together by common aims or characteristics, but if we investigate what these aims and charac-teristics are, problems arise.

It is extremely important that historians, especially historians of past soci-eties, make clear to their audience which models they use for their analysis. Th e sociological debate on communities, whose roots are in Ferdinand Tön-nies’s Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft , published in 1887, is very lively. It has enjoyed renewed attention aft er the edition of John Rawls A theory of justice in 1971: among the reactions to the main ideas of that book (considered as a sort of paradigm of classical liberalism and neo-contractualism) we fi nd the works of the so-called communitarians. Th ey are mainly Anglo-Saxons: Michael Sandel, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and Michael Walzer are among the most famous,15 while, for instance, Italian and French



16 See the Italian overviews on this topic: Pazé 2002; Fistetti 2003.17 Bauman 1997 and 2001.18 Th is is evident when we consider books such as Kloppenborg and Wilson 1996, or

Egelhaaf-Gaiser and Schäfer 2002; see also Galli 2003.19 But it can also be translated with ‘assembly’. Maybe koinonia is the closest Greek

term for the Latin derivate word ‘community’.20 On this topics see Galli 2003.

philosophers and sociologists remained more critical of this category.16 In short, the communitarians found that liberalism put too much confi dence in the State and so they stressed the role of the communities between the State and the individual. Communitarians fi nd the State as something ‘cold’ if not authoritarian. To some degree, they accepted Weber’s defi nition of community, renewing it in the light of the problems opened by the rising of the multicultural and post-modern societies. Th e concept of community itself has also been the subject of a renewed interest in the past ten years, especially in the fi eld of sociology in connection with the debate on globali-zation. Recent works of Zygmunt Bauman, for instance, make extensive use of the sociological category of community in this respect.17

Th e subject of communitarian investigation –and of Rawls himself on the opposite side– is modern societies: consequently, if we look at models of communities, we see that they are structured primarily from a modern point of view (or on the counter Weberian ideal type of Gemeinschaft ). How has this issue been received by contemporary historians of antiquity? I conducted a brief survey (which certainly does not pretend to be exhaus-tive) and it suggests that we usually apply the term ‘community’ to a variety of human groups, very oft en without clarifying what we mean by using the term. While the ‘association model’ is clearer than the ‘com-munity model’, and above all is closer to ancient realities,18 community is still ambiguous, in my opinion. It is a proper label for groups in which the sentimental and ideal bond is very important, if not preeminent, or for groups that oppose themselves to State or society (such as some reli-gious groups), or in any case for groups that need to diff erentiate them-selves from others. In antiquity, community, public space, identity, and associations are connected with one another. Th is connection becomes clear, for instance, if we consider the fi rst centuries of the rise of Christi-anity: in this case the term ekklesia, through which some groups defi ned themselves, has been eff ectively translated into the word ‘community’.19 Th ese communities had strong religious and ideal ties and were struc-tured to make themselves diff erent from the embedded society and from the religious groups from which they originated. Community, in this case, is basically a matter of identity.20


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21 See Mazza 2001, 83.22 P.Oxy. L, 3585 (442) and SB VI, 9503 (441), on which cfr. Mazza, L’archivio degli

Apioni, (n. 12, above), 52 n. 23.23 See the defi nition of fi rm given in Frier and Kehoe 2007, 113-114: “economic enter-

prises of all diff erent sizes and degrees of complexity, including those engaged in agricul-tural production, manufacture of goods and provision of customer services; those devoted to transport, storage, and wholesale and retail marketing; and those that primarily organize, facilitate, or fi nance commerce”.

24 On the entrepreneurial attitudes in antiquity see Kehoe 1992.

Keeping in mind these essential (and almost oversimplifi ed) elements of the current debate on community and communitarians, we can analyse our sources, trying to fi nd an adjective for our hypothetical community, the Byzantine oikos. We can guess if an oikos is a family or a domestic community. Th e pattern of a family is certainly connected with Byzantine oikoi, but it only gives a partial account of what a house really was. For instance, consider how our sources called ‘houses’: as we will see beyond, they used the names of the owner, but oft en this owner is not the head of a family, of a dynasty, and in some cases he or she cannot be the eff ective owner. We have the house of Apion, the house of Strategius, but at the same time the house of Praeiecta, (certainly not the chief of a dynasty in the male oriented society of the time).21 Th e house of Th eon, as we shall see, is mentioned also aft er the death of the man, and we observe the same with some domus of imperial princesses, such as Arcadia.22 I conclude that belonging to a family only partially defi nes the oikos.

Usually papyri refer to oikoi as economic and administrative subjects, so we could try to defi ne them as economic communities, that is to say groups of people with the same economic interests and aims, but clearly the economic sphere implies much more. Moreover, is this category, eco-nomic community, really meaningful and helpful to understand oikoi and their relationship to the surrounding society?

To sum up: in my opinion ‘enterprise’ is the most useful model for understanding the Byzantine oikos.23 Th e English word ‘enterprise’ as well as the corresponding Italian, French, Spanish, or German terms, present some points of uneasiness, since they are linked with the modern concept of the entrepreneur and the idea of individual enterprise. Men with entre-preneurial attitudes and men who actually improved more than created economic enterprises were present in ancient and Late Antique societies.24 Th e modern entrepreneurial fi gure is slightly diff erent because of the deeply diff erent socio-historical context in which he operates. In the pages which follow, I am going to analyse some aspects of the Egyptian Byzan-tine oikoi with the aim to explain the particular form of enterprise which we are discussing. Finally, even if the concept of community does not help



25 Jones 1964, 712.26 On the late antique city see recently Rich 1992; Lavan 2001; Liebeschuetz 2001. On

Egyptian cities in particular Alston 2001.

to defi ne the aspects of the Byzantine Egyptian oikos, it is true that the communitarians’ approach, along with a systemic sociological approach, is useful to clarify the relationships and interactions among the diff erent elements that composed the late antique society as a whole, oikoi and poleis included.

2 Oikoi and civic institutions

While it has been rather complicated to defi ne the oikos –as I have explained so far–there is an excellent defi nition of Late Antique polis, the one given by Jones in the Later Roman Empire:25

Th e Roman Empire was an agglomeration of cities (civitates, poleis), self-governing communities responsible for the administration of the areas which they occupied, their territories. In each civitas there was a town which was its administrative capital and in varying degrees its economic and social centre, but there was no legal distinction between the urban and rural mem-bers of the community. Constitutionally and administratively, then, the cities were the cells of which the empire was composed. Geographically the map of the empire was a mosaic of city territories.

Th is defi nition, which Jones explains and specifi es in his next pages, has the great merit not to separate the city and its territorium, avoiding the dichotomy between city and countryside, urban and rural.26

One of the major points in the current debate on Byzantine Egyptian oikoi is their role in the institutional life of cities and provinces. In 1931 Hardy wondered if the Oxyrhynchite oikoi were private estates or admin-istrative divisions. Today, the most infl uential opinion is Gascou’s: in the same long article quoted before, he concludes that oikoi were semi-public institutions aft er the State transferred some public duties and roles to them. In particular, Gascou thinks that when large estate owners paid their taxes and those of the city directly to the provincial authorities (the so-called autopragia), they did so because they were burdened with a municipal munus.

In his recent book on the municipal notables of the Proto-Byzantine Empire, Avshalom Laniado interprets the role of the oikoi in civic public life following the same pattern. Th e scholar registers an increasing role of the “notables non curiales” in the performing of civic munera, due to the social changes of the period. Th is implies that this leading group –


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27 Laniado 2002, esp. 214-223.28 P.Warren I, 3 (before 504); P.Oxy. XVI, 1887 (538); SB XXIV, 15955 (540/541);

P.Oxy. I, 126 (572). Cf. also P.Oxy. L, 3583 (444): the structure is slightly diff erent, see the discussion below.

29 See P.Ness. III, 24 (569); P.Petra I, 3; 4; 5 (all texts dating 538). A useful table of evidence is added by T. Rankinen and M. Vierros in the general introduction to the three Petra epistalmata (P.Petra I, pp. 80-81).

30 See the comparative discussion of the evidence by Rankinen and Vierros in P.Petra I, pp. 73-81.

composed primarily by the bishop, the clergy, the senatorial aristocracy and the possessores, and only secondarily by the local civic municipal class –which was in a deep crisis– tended to decide autonomously who had to be appointed to a certain magistracy and who had to provide for the civic munera. Laniado thinks that there were actually no tensions in this regard, since the episcopal election was the most important fact and decision in the political life of the Byzantine cities.27

Looking at papyri dealing with the oikoi’s role in the administration of Egyptian cities of the time, two main situations can be identifi ed:

a) there are documents in which a house openly appears to be in charge of an offi cium;

b) there are documents in which the owner of a house is a civic mag-istrate, who performs his duties personally or through a representative.

One of the most interesting dossiers of type a) documents relates to the offi ce of the exactor civitatis in Oxyrhynchus. Th ere are few fi fth and sixth century epistalmata tou somatismou addressed to the exaktorike taxis “of the part and house of Th eon (or of Timagenes)”, both of blessed memory, through an adiutor or an epimeletes.28 In these documents, people report that the ownership of land has changed and, consequently, the responsibil-ity to pay taxes on it. Th e documents’ typology is well attested not only in Egypt, but also in other provinces of the Empire: requests for transfer of taxation come from Petra and Nessana too.29 A comparison of the evidence demonstrates both the common necessity to inform the tax offi ces when taxation dues on land change for some reason and the diff erences among the local administration practices in this regard.30 Documents were usually addressed to the demosion logos, the exaktorike taxis, or directly to various offi cials. Based on the evidence currently available, at Oxyrhynchus they were always connected with the offi cium of the exactor. Th is procedure is also demonstrated by P.Michael 33 (prob. 367/68), the most ancient exam-ple of epistalma tou somatismou coming from the city, addressed to Aure-lios Martyrios adiutor of the exactor. Th us it becomes clear that in Late Antique Oxyrhynchus the offi cium of the exactor was responsible for updating the civic fi scal cadastre. Late Antique legislation mentions



31 Legal evidence collected and discussed by Laniado 2002, 109-113. On the exactores in Egypt see also Th omas 1989; for a list of papyri citing exactores, see Sijpesteijn 1992, 247-250.

32 PSI Congr XVII 29, 3-5:t±Ç merídi toÕ lamprotátou Timagénouv dià Marturíou | kaì ÂpfoÕ bojq¬n êzaktoríav t±v lampr¢v kaì lampro|tátj[v Ô]z[u]rugxit¬n pólewv.

Only a few lines of the beginning are preserved, so it is uncertain if the document is an epistalma tou somatismou or another kind of fi scal registration.

33 P.Oxy. L, 3583, 3-5:[merí]di toÕ o÷kou toÕ t±v peribléptou mnßmjv Timagénouv dià | [....]ou kaì QeodÉrou bojq¬n êzaktoríav t±v lampr¢v kaì lampr(otátjv) | [Ôzuru]gxit¬n pólewv,

34 On Flavius Magistor see Sijpesteijn 1981 and 1982.

the exactores as one of many subjects involved in tax collection (namely archontes, curiales, vindices, canonicarii and others, as stated, for instance, in Nov. 128, caput V).31

However, one major interesting point is the involvement of the houses of Th eon and Timagenes in performing this responsibility. Th anks to new editions, we actually know that the house of Timagenes held the offi ce of exactor in the Oxyrhynchites as early as 432. It is very interesting to con-sider two documents addressed to the exaktoriké taxis of Oxyrhynchus over a time span of twelve years. On 31 August, 432, Flavius Horion, son of Th eon, addressed a document “to the division of the clarissimus Tim-agenes, through Martyrios and Apphous, adiutores of the exactoria of the clara et clarissima city of the Oxyrhynchites.”32 In 444 Aurelius Mousaios, son of Arion, presented an epistalma with a slightly diff erent addressing formula: “to the division of the house of Timagenes, of splendid mem-ory, through… and Th eodoros, adiutores of the exactoria of the clara et clarissima city of the Oxyrhynchites.”33 While the clarissimus Timagenes was alive the tax division was under his name, but later it passed to his house. Th is implies that the noble man was expected to perform as exac-tor competing to his division according to his substance. His property kept the status of munus also later on, even until the sixth century, although other people actually performed those duties, and his oikos, intended as a fi rm composed by movable and real properties, disappeared because of hereditary divisions or any other reason.

If we compare the Oxyrhynchus epistalmata to similar documents com-ing from other nomes and provinces, it seems that only at Hermoupolis did anything similar take place. As a matter of fact P.Laur. III, 77 (603) and P.Würzb. 19 (622) are addressed to the demosion logos through Flav-ios Magistor, adiutor of the logisterion and diastoleus (cashier) of the meris of Dioskorides in the fi rst document; of the meris of Ammonios, Anato-lios, Germanous, Taurinous and possibly others, in the second.34 Th ese


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35 Cfr. SB XXII, 15319 (=BGU XII, 2169) (442-447) and BGU XII, 2170, with the com-ments of Palme 1994, 52-55 and 67-68 (new edition of the fi rst text).

36 Gascou 1985, n. 261, 44-45. See also Gascou and Sijpesteijn 1993, esp. 119-121.37 Gascou and Sijpesteijn 1993.38 Gascou 1985, 41-43. It must be noted that even if the French scholar concluded that

“Il n’est pas possible non plus de voir dans l’exactorikè taxis de Timagenes et Th eon un bureau privè” in the light of the papyri considered here, he continued to admit “nous con-clurions, malgré tout, sur un non liquet, si nous ne disposions, a présent, sur ces oikoi de Timagénès et de Th éon, d’un dossier fort éclairant”, loc.cit. 43.

39 Similar questions are raised by Liebeschuetz 1996, 404-405.40 House of Th eon: P.Oxy. XVI, 2016, 1 (VI cent. see BL VIII, 253); P.Oxy. XVI, 2039,

1 (562-63?); P.Oxy. XVI, 1999, 1 (BL XI, 157) (VI-VII cent.); P.Oxy. XVI, 2009, 1 (VII cent.). House of Timagenes: PSI Congr XVII 29,3 (31/8/432); P.Oxy. XVI, 1887, 2 (15/4/538); P.Oxy. XXXVI, 2780, r 10-11 (16/7/553); SB XII, 11079, r 9 (17/3/571); P.Oxy. I, 149, 2 (22/9/572); P. Haun. III, 64, r 2; 7; 11; v, 17; 22; 27 (VI cent.); P.Oxy. XVI, 2016, 5; 13-14 (VI cent.).

merides, ‘parts, divisions’, were certainly created well before the beginning of the seventh century, since they are attested in documents of the begin-ning of the fi ft h century.35 In the Hermopolites sources they are always connected to personal names, never to oikoi. As J. Gascou argued, the Hermopolites merides were not territorial, but abstract and accounting divisions of the demosion logisterion of the city, calculated on the basis of sharing expenses connected with the running of the offi ce by groups of responsible citizens.36 Th ose responsible were members of the notables of the city as attested by lists in which also their titles are given and probably were owners of estates and properties in the nome.37

Now what remains diffi cult to defi ne is the modus operandi of the administrative machinery. It is conceivable that a number of notables were burdened to share munera and liturgies; much more problematic is to understand where the fi scal rolls were actually kept, in which buildings the employees worked, and where the archives of the exaktoria or of the demosion logisterion as well as those of other civic offi cials were located. In Jean Gascou’s opinion, all the minor offi cers, such as adiutores and epimeletai, were public employees.38 From a juridical point of view, I agree, but in practice, since houses were obliged to pay for the perform-ance of a munus, which role did they actually play in choosing the men who performed the duties? In other words: what was the real procedure for appointing curatores, adiutores and other public employees? How far were the houses involved in this process? How much impact did this sys-tem have on the society of Late Antique Egypt?39

Th e house of Th eon and the house of Timagenes also appear in addi-tional documents.40 Another example of munus performed by the oikos of Th eon is attested by P.Oxy. XVI, 2039. Th e text is titled as “account of the riparia of the House of Th eon” and summarizes how the domus illustris,



41 I follow the new edition of Azzarello 2006. However, the calculation of the indictions cycles covered by the account still presents some doubts, since Azzarello assumed that each house held the offi ce separately, but, as she admits in the same article (p. 209, n. 7), there are examples of shared appointment to the charge.

42 SB XII, 11079 (571), ll. 5-12:Fl(aouíwç) ˆApíwni [t¬ç paneuf]ßmwç kaì üperfuestátwç âpò üpátwn [ôrdin(aríwn) kaì] patrik(íwç) geouxoÕnti kaì êntaÕqa t±Ç [Néaç ˆIoustín]ou pólei laxónti t®n paterían kaì [proedrían] kaì logisteían êpì t±v eûtux(oÕv) pémptjv [înd(iktíonov) üpèr] o÷kou toÕ t±v periblé(ptou) mnßmjv [Timagén]ouv üpèr ônómatov Qeodos [ c? di]à so(Õ) QeodÉro(u) toÕ aîdes(ímou) diadóx[ou Aûrßlio]v PetrÉniov stippoxeir(ist®v)

43 See Laniado 2002, 221-222.

the heirs of the spectabilis Leontius, the heirs of the spectabilis Philoxenos, son of Pseeios, and the heirs of Mousaios, son of Strat… shared the burden of this munus among them for 103 years.41 It is interesting to note that the munus was nominally assigned to the oikos of Th eon, but it was actually paid for by these other subjects, following a pattern much like that of the offi ce of the exactor we have considered. Similarly in SB XII, 11079 (571) Fl. Apion appears as holding a series of offi ces for the house of Timagenes. Th e papyrus is the beginning of a deed of surety addressed to Apion II by Aurelius Petronius, stippocheiristes (agent of the tow-merchants), on behalf of an Aurelios Pekysion, ll. 5-12:

To Flavius Apion the most famous and most magnifi cent ex consul ordi-narius and patricius, large landowner also here in the New city of Justin (i.e. Oxyrhynchus), who is bearing the charges of pater civitatis, president of the curia and exactor civitatis for the fortunate fi ft h indiction for the house of Timagenes of spectabilis memory, for the name of Th eodos… through you Th eodoros, honest substitutus, I Aurelius Petronius agent of the tow mer-chants…. 42

Th e address is remarkable, since it is another piece of evidence attesting that the principal administrative charges of the city of Oxyrhynchus were attributed through the same system registered for the exatorike taxis. A similar case is attested in P.Oxy. XXXVI, 2780 (553). Here Fl. Gabrielia, a patricia from Oxyrhynchus, held the charges of logistes (curator civitatis), proedros and pater civitatis, nominally attributed to the oikos of Th eagenes, through her diadochos Christophoros, who bears the middle ranking title of aidesimos.43 Th e formulaic address is very similar to that of the already analysed SB XII, 11079, and the papyrus is almost entirely preserved. It is a declaration of Aurelios Timotheos, hydroparochos (one who furnishes water) of the public bath of Oxyrhynchus, for having received his misthos, a payment clearly connected with the civic duties as logistes performed by


274 roberta mazza

44 Th e same cashier Ioannes probably appears in a receipt from Oxyrhynchus, SB XXVI, 16795 (553).

45 Mazza 2001, 136-137.46 On diadochos as substitutus see Laniado 2002, 221-222.47 Cfr. J. Rea comment to the edition (CPR V, pp. 40-43).48 Gascou 1994.49 Zuckerman 2004.

the landlady, since the man states that the salary was paid as fi rst instal-ment of the logisteias of the second indiction. Th e sum, two solidi of pri-vate standard, was received through Ioannes, the cashier (zygostates)44 of Fl. Gabrielia, and the document was written by a notary.

Coming back to SB XII, 11079, it is well known that in Oxyrhynchus the Apions appear as landowners and were almost always represented by an oiketes, a domestic servant, named Menas.45 Th e presence of a diado-chos in SB XII, 11079 should be a clue that the document, as well as the similar P.Oxy. XXXVI, 2780, may be linked to the civic performance of a charge through a substitute from the middle municipal elite of the city, and not immediately involved in the administration of the oikos.46 SB XII, 11079 seems to be a deed of surety; it was published by R. Rémondon, and now the papyrus is unfortunately lost. Only the fi rst sixteen lines of the documents and a line on the endorsement were preserved. Th e author of the declaration is a stippocheiristes (tow merchant). Th is should imply that the deed of surety would have been of the kind of the fragmentary CPR V 17 (late fi ft h century), where the chief of the guild of the shop-keepers of Herakleopolis assures the regular service of these workers dur-ing the performance of the logisteia by an unnamed domus gloriosa.47 Th at this house was that of the Apions is now confi rmed by P.Eirene II, 12 (492), a well preserved deed of surety from Herakleopolis addressed to the oikos of Apion through Apollos, logistes, by a scriniarius of the offi ce of the praeses, assuring that a man defi ned as fi shmonger and gardener should have accomplished his duties at the residence of the praeses during the logisteia of the house.

Another interesting characteristic of the addressing formula of SB XII, 11079 is that an intermediate passage seems to be involved, since Apion held the offi ces for the oikos of Th eagenes, for the onoma of Th eodos… Th is kind of arrangement resembles very closely the structure of the entries of some fi scal ledgers, rolls, and documents coming in particular from the Hermopolites48 and the Antaioupolites.49 Th e way the admin-istrative system worked becomes clearer when we compare the afore-mentioned papyri with the texts coming from civic fi scal bureaux. We can consider, for instance, the Hermopolite tax-roll edited by J. Gascou



50 Documents listed and discussed in Mazza 1995, 190-191 and 227-229. See also Four-net 2000, 233-247. On sharing the charge see Gascou 1972, 60-72. Patrikia has been iden-tifi ed by J.-L. Fournet with the lady to whom Dioscorus from Aphrodito dedicated an epithalamium; she is possibly cited in PSI III, 238 where the oikos of the paneuphemos Patrikias is mentioned, cfr. Fournet 1999, text IV, 35 and pp. 634-637, with previous bibli-ography.

51 Cf. Mazza 1995, 183-184 and 234-240; Palme 1997; Mazza 2001, 63-64. Th e relation-ship between the Fayum and the Oxyrhynchite branches of the family presents some obscu-rities, see Mazza 2004.

(P.Sorb II, 69): it is probably the ledger of the taxes in grain to be col-lected on the civic territory of Hermopolis. Th e pattern of the entries is oft en the same: there is a holder of a fi scal title (onoma) and then inter-mediaries (the names introduced by dia), who actually paid for the onoma. Th e onoma probably corresponded to an owner of the land, the taxes on which land at a certain point were to be paid by other people for diff erent reasons (inheritance, selling of the land, etc.). Th e fi scal bureau (demosion logisterion) must have recorded all these passages to keep its accounts clear and in accordance with ledgers and tax-rolls, which very oft en presented a sort of crystallized image of the fi scal con-tributors as it was at the time of the fi rst redaction of them. In a similar way, the civic bureau of Oxyrhynchus recorded, as we have just seen, that the liturgical duties of the house of Th eon actually passed to other houses and fi scal subjects. In conclusion, I think that the records of liturgical duties were kept in the same way as that of direct taxes on land and properties.

Next I will deal with examples of type b), i.e. documents in which the owner of an oikos is a civic magistrate performing his duties (munera personalia, patrimonalia, or mixta) personally or through representa-tives. In Antaiopolis the aristocrat and landowner (geouchos) Iulianus was sometimes the sole pagarch and sometimes shared that offi ce with other magnates of the nome, such as Menas, Kometes and Euthymios, and also with a lady, the endoxotate Patrikias, who performed her duties through a representative (her dioiketes and pagarch Menas, possibly the same man already mentioned).50 In this last case the presence of a rep-resentative is not due to Patrikia’s being a woman, but to the nature of the munus: the lady paid a sum for the performance of the charge, and she also paid and invested his dioiketes Menas for doing the tasks con-nected with the offi ce.

Th e charge of pagarch was oft en performed by geouchoi, members of the Apion family were pagarchs and stratelatai of the Arsinoites and Th e-odosioupolites nome.51 In the Antinoopolite the pagarch Kollouthos is attested: as member of the Apa Dio’s family, he was the brother of the dux


276 roberta mazza

52 Cf. Mazza 1995, 204-205 and 232-234; Fournet 1999, esp. 328-329 and 556-557.53 Fournet 1999, 329.54 On the hypothetical relationship between the ladies and the Apions family, see

Mazza 2001, 67-72 and Mazza 2004, esp. 275ff . with previous bibliography.

of the Th ebaid Kallinikos and of the comes Dorotheus, all of them cele-brated in Dioscorus of Aphrodite’s poems.52 It still remains unclear if the term geouchos was equivalent to “owner of an oikos.” Some documents such as P.Oxy. XVI, 2039, cases similar to that of Iulianus (i.e. landowners whose ousia is mentioned in the sources), or the case of the Apa Dio’s fam-ily –“une grande famille, appartenant à l’aristocratie du grand domaine” as defi ned by J.-L. Fournet– 53 seem to imply this. We do not know if to defi ne an estate as a “house” this should comprise a certain amount of real estate (or in other terms it must have produced a large income), or whether there was an offi cial statement by the imperial authorities on this status.

In summary oikoi and their owners were burdened by taxes and litur-gies of diff erent kinds and were involved in public administration at dif-ferent levels. Th is assumption is quite expected and obvious: great land-owners were part of the notables who performed munera et honores in the cities of the Byzantine empire. Th ey were rich and infl uential and conse-quently the state wanted them to pay taxes through direct and indirect taxation, munera, liturgies, etc., and to be involved in the administration of cities and provinces. Since in some cases aristocrats did not reside in Egypt, but in other provinces or in the capital, as in the case of the Apions, they oft en carried out their duties through representatives. Th e presence of these middlemen needs closer investigation. Moreover, diff erences in local scribal uses must be considered. In the Arsinoites, for instance, dioi-ketai, diadochoi, and other representatives are oft en absent from the documents addressing formulas. I wonder how this phenomenon should be evaluated, especially in cases such as that of CPR X, 127 a deed of surety addressed to Fl. Th eophania and her daughters, styled as pateras of the city of Arsinoe. In this document two irenarchs of the epoikion Strate-giou, belonging to the ladies as heirs of Strategios, late husband of Th e-ophania, assured the permanence in the hamlet of some inhabitants of that locality.54 As stated above, there are no middlemen acting for the landowners: did the ladies live or spend periods in Arsinoe and adminis-ter their properties directly, or does the text refl ect documentary practices diff erent from those of the Oxyrhynchite sources?

In Oxyrhynchus, oikoi were apparently perceived as ‘entities’, or better, enterprises and fi scal subjects much more than elsewhere in Egypt. But we must be careful not to draw defi nitive conclusions on this topic, since



55 Cfr. Bagnall 2005, 553-554.56 Wipszycka 1972; Th omas 1987, 59-110.57 On this document see Gonis 2002, 92-93 with previous bibliography.58 Cfr. Th omas 1987, 83-87.59 Mazza 2005a, with previous bibliography.

it can simply depend on the typologies of the documents from that site and on the documentary practices refl ected in them. Th e bulk of the Oxy-rhynchite papyri derives from the city’s archives (mostly private in this age); however, the historical picture of other areas, such as the Fayum, which gave a lot of Byzantine material, is built on documents mostly from villages and rural territories, and less from the metropoleis.55 Every scholar working on Egyptian matters knows that new fi ndings or editions of texts can bring new perspectives.

3 Oikoi and religious institutions

Th e relationship between oikoi and religious institutions is a dual theme since on the one hand aristocratic houses dealt with churches, monaster-ies, hospitals etc., and on the other there were ecclesiastical institutions, the ‘pious houses’.56

I will start from this second point. We know that the Church owned real estate and properties in Egypt as everywhere. In Oxyrhynchus, among the main contributors of P.Oxy. XVI, 2020, an account of arcarica assign-able to the 80s of the sixth century, there is also the hagia ekklesia (l. 16).57 Th e ecclesiastical patrimonium functioned in a manner very similar to that of aristocratic houses: bureaucratic personnel administered the land and real estate, through renting or direct exploitation. Among the papers from ecclesiastical archives, there are documents very close to those of the Apions archives or of other large landowners: receipts for parts of irriga-tion machines (e.g. P.Oxy. XVI, 1900, dated 528); contracts relating to the collection of rents (e.g. P.Oxy. XVI, 1894, dated 573); orders wine to be delivered to offi cers, labourers, and other people (e.g. P.Oxy. XVI, 1950, dated 487; P.Oxy. XVI, 1951, dated 485); and leases (e.g. P.Oxy. XVI, 1967 dated 427).58

Th is pattern of management, obviously with regional variations, was the same for all patrimonia, ousiai, or oikoi of the Late Antique Mediter-ranean world: a similar way of exploiting the land, for instance, took place in Italy on the patrimonium Petri as attested by the Epistles of Gregory the Great.59 If we analyse Justinian’s legislation, the same hierarchy of offi cers and managers as in the Egyptian documents is recorded: ecclesiastical


278 roberta mazza

60 Mazza 2001, 141-143.61 With corrections in BL VIII, 120-121.62 Wipszycka 1972; 1996. See also Th omas 1987, 59-110.63 Th omas 1987, 42-43.

dioiketai, oikonomoi, and chartularii are mentioned, for example, in Nov. 120 (544).

I dealt with the divine house in my book on the Apion archives, con-cluding that the structure of the management of private aristocratic pat-rimonia was modelled on that of the imperial ones.60 On this subject, it is interesting to note that connections and similarities were emphasized by the fact that employees of diff erent houses were oft en in touch with one another in everyday life. We can see this, for instance, in P.Erlang. 67 (Herakleopolis dated 591, cfr. BL VII, 47),61 in which employees of diff er-ent houses appear: the dioiketes of the oikos of Sophia lend money in a contract whose witnesses were a riparius of the house of Praeiecta and a comes and chartularius, probably belonging to another house. Moreover, in P.Oxy. XVI, 1892 (581), a loan of money on security, the creditor is an epikeimenos of the divine house, and the debtor a presbyter of the church of Oxyrhynchus. Middlemen between aristocrats and peasants or labour-ers in general, the employees formed a social network on which a lot of research still needs to be done.

Th ese last documents bring us to the second theme, the relationship between oikoi and their owners, and churches and pious foundations. As we know especially from E. Wipszycka’s studies in this fi eld, there were private foundations in Egypt.62 Rich aristocrats, as always in the history of the Greco-Roman world, showed their civic euergetism by paying for buildings, games, and public celebrations. With the growth and fi nal victory of Christianity, a large part of this kind of munifi cence involved ecclesiastical matters. Churches, oratories, and chapels as well as monasteries, hospitals, and xenodochia were built by aristocrats on their own estates. Even if submitted to the control of the local bishop, these private religious foundations should have been subject to the will of the owners, especially owners as powerful as the Apions were. Th is infl uence induced emperors, especially Justinian, to issue laws on the subject. In Nov. 7, XI (535), for instance, the emperor prohibited mon-asteries from conversion to secular use, as was happening in Alexandria and in Egypt. Th e religious tendencies of the founders were another matter of concern, and Justinian intervened repeatedly on this subject.63 Also in this regard the Egyptian situation must have been one of the most dangerous from the imperial point of view given the spreadead belief of monophysism.



64 See for instance the annual accounts of the pronoetai coming from the Apions archives, for a list cf. Mazza 2001, 193 and Mazza 1998; discussion of the evidence in Th omas 1987, 83-96 and 98-104. See also P. Bad. 95, with Schnebel 1928, and notes and corrections to the text in Morelli 1998. I do not think that the buildings always belonged to private owners: such gift s were devolved to the ecclesiastical institution itself. Th e prac-tice was a symbol of the religious and political attitude of the ruling élite.

65 See for instance P.Oxy. XVIII, 2197, 11; 18; 185.66 What follows is mostly based on Mazza 2001, passim.

Oikoi accounts prove that geouchoi gave regular amounts of wheat and money to the main religious institutions of the villages and epoikia con-nected with their estates.64 Th e accounts also show that the geouchoi were involved in the maintenance and restoration of the architectural struc-tures themselves, as attested by the brick registers from the Apions estates.65 Th e presence of churches, hospitals, and other religious institu-tions in the countryside must have had an impact on the social environ-ment, no matter what their size was. Th ese buildings surely played an important role in the construction of a sense of community among the inhabitants of the hamlets, villages, and scattered factories of Egypt.

4 People in everyday life: oikoi within the city

Th is last theme brings us to consider more directly the geouchoi and oikoi’s role and visibility inside the Byzantine Egyptian polis. On this topic Oxyrhynchus, once again, provides an excellent starting point.66

Th e presence of the Apions greatly infl uenced the architectural feature of this metropolis. Th e residence of the family was a big palace, styled as megale oikia in some Oxyrhynchus papyri, built just outside one of the gates of the city. Around the palace there was a large area of the patrimo-nium called proastion Exo tes Pyles. Even if the name literally seems to imply that the residence and its fi elds, gardens, etc. were outside the city walls, the palace must have been quite close to the city since we know that a stairway joined the building to the hippodrome. Th erefore, we can sup-pose that at the time of their formation the proastion and the palace were built just outside one of the gates of Oxyrhynchus, but during the centu-ries they grew and the city with them, so it is probable that Oxyrhynchus’s walls must had been enlarged when necessary. In fact, during the reign of Emperor Arcadius, the polis became the capital of the new province of Arcadia; moreover, papyri and literary sources, such as the Historia Mona-chorum in Aegypto (V, 1-7 and VI, 1-3), inform us that at that time Oxy-rhynchus, deeply Christianized, was rich and populous.


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67 Cfr. Gascou 1976, 185-212; Laniado 2002, 90 and 96-97.68 Crawford 1920; Perpillou-Th omas 1993; Mazza 2005b.

Life within the palace must have been intense. A multitude of people –servants, cooks, artisans, secretaries, scribes, messengers, guards and so on– worked permanently for the oikos and in some cases lived in the ‘great house’. Th ere was a continuous coming and going of citizens and countrymen who were always asking for something: the replacement of a water-wheel, a loan, a delay in the rent’s payment, a concession or help of some sort. Th e importance of the palatial complex and of the eco-nomic and political activities that took place inside it must have caused a certain competition with the palaces of civic and provincial authorities, and with authorities themselves, when not personifi ed by members of the Apion family or their representatives. Also in that period the Graeco-Roman city developed into the Late Antique city. Temples gave way to churches, monasteries, and orators; gymnasia and other buildings too rooted in the so-called pagan culture disappeared. Other complexes, such as the thermae, continued to exist; the circus in par-ticular underwent a major development and became the core of the imperial pompé. Papyri inform us that the geouchoi fi nanced circus factions and chariot races.67 Th e Apions had a private seat in the hip-podrome of Oxyrhynchus, where their appearance, when they visited the province, must have been similar to that of the imperial family in Con-stantinople’s hippodrome.

Th e making of a Christian empire also implied a remodelling of the festival calendar. Th anks to Egyptian papyri, not only liturgical calendars, but also documents that describe what festivals were like are now avail-able. From this point of view, it is interesting to consider the case of the Brumalia, since this festivity was much more connected with the political than with the religious side of public celebrations. An old work of J.R. Crawford and a most recent article of F. Perpillou-Th omas demonstrated that an ancient Greco-Roman festival, the Bruma, transformed gradually into the Byzantine Brumalia: it was a long holiday starting on the Novem-ber 24 and ending on the December 17.68 A letter from the Greek alpha-bet was associated with each day of the period, so everyone celebrated his Brumalia on the date corresponding to their personal name’s fi rst letter. Literary sources illustrate that Justinian gave special importance to this celebration; in particular, the chonicler Malalas describes the origins of Brumalia, transferring features of the celebration that took place at the Constantinople imperial court to the moment of a mythical institution of the eorté attributed to Romulus in person. What is interesting is to analyse



69 Jo. Mal. Chron., VII, 7; translation from Jeff reys et al. 1986. 70 Same entry in another wine account PSI VIII, 953 (567/568), see Mazza 2005b.71 My translation. Th e diploun, literally ‘double measure’, was a standard measure for

liquids. Its precise capacity may vary, see Hickey 2001, 291-292.72 See Beaucamp 2001; see also my remarks in Mazza 2004, passim.73 Mazza 2004, 265-267 with previous bibliography.

Malalas description under the light of the entry of one oinocheiristes’s annual account in the Apions’ archives:

Because of this Romulus devised what is known as the Brumalia, declaring, it is said, that the emperor of the time must entertain his entire senate and offi cials and all who serve in the palace, since they are persons of conse-quence, during the winter when there is a respite from fi ghting. He began by inviting and entertaining fi rst those whose names began with alpha, and so on, right to the last letter; he ordered his senate to entertain in the same way. Th ey too entertained the whole army, and those they wanted. Th e pan-doura-players from each military unit went in the evening to the houses of those who had invited them to dine the next day and played, so that the unit should know that they would be entertained by that person the following day. Th is custom of the Brumalia has persisted in the Roman state to the present day.69

P.Oxy. XXVII, 2480, 37-40 (565/566):70

to the undersaid people on the happy Brumalia of our master, the most magnifi cent Apion, Hathyr 28 (November 24), XIV indiction, 33 wine’s dipla in this way: to the buccellarii 12 dipla, to the spatharii 8 dipla; to the Goths 4 dipla, to the cooks 6 dipla, to the pandoura-players (pandouristai) 2 dipla, to the serv-ants (structores) 1 diploun, as stated before71

It is clear that Apion II celebrated his Brumalia at Oxyrhynchus in the same way the emperor did at Constantinople.

Th e Apions were members of the imperial court, very close to Justin’s house.72 Th ey had been loyal supporters of the sovereigns almost from Justin I onwards and contributed to asserting the values and ideals of the Byzantine Empire (or the Roman Empire as the men of that time would have defi ned it). Th e Apions exported a style of life, Constantinople’s, to Egypt. Th eir loyalty to the Empire probably caused their fall, which was due, as it seems, to the Persian invasion of Egypt in 618. Th e family, fi rstly monophysite, became Chalcedonian under the Justinian dynasty. Moreo-ver, it seems that one branch of the family remained monophysite in accordance with a strategy to manage religious tensions typical of the period, as we can observe also in the famous case of Justinian and Th eo-dora’s diff ering religious inclinations.73


282 roberta mazza

74 Montevecchi 1973, 217-218.75 Müller 1985.76 Saradi 1998, 17-43. On P.Bad. IV, 95 see n. 62.

Finally yet importantly, the infl uence of great aristocrats on the archi-tectural shaping of the Late Antique city was due to the magnifi cence of their palaces and to the political and ideological power of the owners themselves. But there is a more material factor as well: large landowners invested in building activities to increase their income. Orsolina Mon-tevecchi noted this in her famous handbook for papyrologists,74 and it is evident when reading the entries of the catalogue appended to H. Müller’s study on leases of real estates that there is a growing number of leases of buildings from the third century onwards, with a peak in the sixth centu-ry.75 Th is probably means that landowners perceived the building trade to be a good investment. Th e oikoi’s accounts, once again, confi rm the trend and reveal the great involvement of geouchoi in this process. Th e Apions’ family and other possessores, such as the lady who owned the Hermopolite large estate that appears in the ledger published by Bilabel as P.Bad. IV 95, invested part of their incomes to restore and increase their real estate both in cities and in minor settlements in the countryside.76

5 Conclusion: citizens or members of the oikos?

We can try to sum up the main characteristics of the Byzantine oikoi, based on the evidence I have presented.

Oikoi and their owners were fi scal subjects of special relevance, both because of the large amounts of properties they controlled and because of the organization of the Late Antique fi scal system itself. Besides the geou-choi were oft en powerful aristocrats with the fi nancial means and above all the political and cultural competence to administer cities and prov-inces. Th erefore, they played a major role in the good functioning of the State, granting tax incomes and governing over the civic territories, which were, according to Jones’s defi nition, the basic units of the Empire.

Houses consisted of large estates scattered not only in the Egyptian region but in some cases, such as the Apions’ one, in diff erent provinces of the Empire. Oikoi were formed by land, buildings, cattle, boats, horses, men, large amounts of money, and goods, in other words by every kind of real or movable properties. All these properties and goods must have been properly managed to assure a very high income in order to allow the owners to maintain their lifestyle. Houses were administered by a class of



77 See Mazza 2001, 52-3.78 Mazza 2007; see also Mazza 2001, 124-128.

local employees who managed the land (renting or exploiting it directly), collected rents and taxes on it, and were the interface between the owners and the local population. To become part of this group, i.e. to enter into the service of a house (aristocratic, imperial, or ecclesiastical), was oft en a good opportunity to start a career and to accumulate money and then land. Th e same Apions may have improved their importance in this way, as Strategios I was curator of the house of Eudocia and possibly of that of Arcadia in the Oxyrhynchites.77

Renting land from large landowners and their oikoi could have been a good opportunity also for the georgoi for two reasons.78 Firstly because geouchoi invested in their land, as we have just seen in the case of building activities. Th is meant that they tried in some cases to support and help their tenants and wage-labourers. Secondly because geouchoi (aristocrats, emperors and their relatives, the church) were powerful members of Late Antique society, and this should have included having a good patronus and being protected from antagonists.

Even if this last aspect should have caused a sort of closure of the oikos towards the embedded society, I think that both the entrepreneurial and the cultural roles of the oikoi within the cities avoided this risk, function-ing as a sort of balance. For this reason the people of the oikoi, mostly the owners themselves, felt like members of the city also thanks to the houses. Moreover, as in case of the Apions in Oxyrhynchus, oikoi transferred the values and culture from the core of the Empire (Constantinople and the Court) to the periphery, working as a powerful tool for shaping the iden-tity of the Late Antique Empire.

Departments of Classics & Ancient History and Religions & Th eology at the University of Manchester.

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