1st Edition

Later Roman Egypt: Society, Religion, Economy and Administration

By Roger S. Bagnall Copyright 2003
    332 Pages
    by Routledge

    Egypt, with its ever-growing wealth of evidence from the papyri, has in recent decades been one of the liveliest areas of scholarship on the later Roman Empire. This volume collects two dozen articles on the social, economic, and administrative history of Egypt by Roger Bagnall, whose book 'Egypt in Late Antiquity' has helped to bring this region and this evidence into the mainstream of historical debate. In these studies some of the main themes of his work are visible, in particular attempts to explore the possibilities for quantifying not only questions like the burden of taxation or the distribution of land-ownership, but more tantalizing and controversial matters like the rate at which the population of Egypt was Christianized.

    Contents: Preface; Society: Slavery and society in late Roman Egypt; Women, law, and social realities in late antiquity: a review article; Missing females in Roman Egypt; Church, state and divorce in late Roman Egypt; Official and private violence in Roman Egypt; The population of Theadelphia in the 4th century; An owner of literary papyri; Religion and Society: Religious conversion and onomastic change in early Byzantine Egypt; Conversion and onomastics: a reply; Combat ou vide: Christianisme et paganisme dans l'Égypte romaine tardive; Charite's Christianity; Economy: Landholding in late Roman Egypt: the distribution of wealth; An Arsinoite metropolitan landowning family of the 4th century; Military officers as landowners in 4th-century Egypt; Price in 'sales on delivery'; The camel, the wagon, and the donkey in later Roman Egypt; Administration and taxation: Agricultural productivity and taxation in later Roman Egypt; P.Oxy. XVI 1905, SB V 7756, and 4th-century taxation; Bullion purchases and landholding in the 4th century; The taxes of Toka; The periodicity and collection of the Chrysargyron; Count Ausonius; Property-holdings of liturgists in 4th-century Karanis; The number and term of the Dekaprotoi; Index.

    Biography

    Roger S. Bagnall

    ' Papyrologists and historians will be grateful to the author for having collected in one volume this wide research ...' Chronique d'Egypte