Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

egypt 613
quently, Libya was separated off to become its own province. Each new
province had its own governor, but all three – Aegyptus, Thebaid, Libya –
were subject to the plenipotentiary authority of the Augustal prefect, resident
in Alexandria.
By the latter part of the fourth century, when Ammianus Marcellinus
was penning his well-known digression on Egypt (22.15–16), the threefold
division into Aegyptus, Libya and the Thebaid seemed to the historian to
have dated ‘to ancient times’ ( priscis temporibus); other subdivisions were the
creations of more recent times ( posteritas). A province of Augustamnica, a
revival of the short-lived Aegyptus Herculia, consisting of the eastern
Delta and the old Heptanomia, had been created out of the territory of
Aegyptus, which retained the western Delta, including the city of
Alexandria; and the province of Libya had come to be divided into
Pentapolis (Libya Superior) and ‘Drier’ Libya (Libya Inferior).
At some time verging on 381, Egypt’s cluster of five provinces became a
self-standing diocese, and shortly after, probably between 386 and the
century’s end, yet another province was created: Arcadia, named for the
emperor Arcadius (d. 408), was deducted (mostly) from Augustamnica. First
mentioned in the papyri towards the very end of the fourth century, the new
province found inclusion in the lists of Egyptian provinces in the Notitia
Dignitatum, in parts that were probably revised in 395 or shortly after. 2 It was
roughly equivalent to the old ‘Seven-Nome Region’, Heptanomia, but
lacked the important middle Egyptian city of Hermopolis, which belonged
to the Thebaid. 3
The six-province nomenclature (Libya Superior, Libya Inferior,
Thebaid, Aegyptus, Arcadia, Augustamnica) is, then, the one that is found
in the Notitia Dignitatum. 4 A half-century later, the same provinces, in a
different order, in terms closer to Ammianus’ but less correctly spelt, are
represented in the Laterculus of Polemius Silvius, a.d. 448. 5 All six provinces
were directly subject to the Augustal prefect as head of the Egyptian
diocese and, through him, subject to the praetorian prefect of the East. It
was not until 539 that new, major changes were effected, this time by
Justinian. The details were recorded in the emperor’s Thirteenth Edict, 6
and from what survives of the edict’s damaged text, it is clear that already
2 Kramer (1992); Notitia Dignitatum ed. Seeck, Or. i.85, ii.29, xxiii.6�13; Jones, LRE Appendix ii.
Cf. Keenan (1977). See now P.Oxy. lxiii 4371, 4385, with introductions; 4386, 10 n.
3 SB i 5337 mentions five Arcadian cities and one district: Herakleopolis, Cynopolis, Memphis,
Letopolis, Nilopolis and ‘the Arsinoite’.
4 Or. xxiii.1–14; Augustamnica was mistakenly excluded from Or. i.80–5 and ii.24–9, cf. Jones, LRE
1417.
5 Not. Dig. ed. Seeck, pp. 259–60 (Aegyptus, Augustamnis, Thebaida, Libia sicca, Libia pentapolis, Archadia),
cf. Jones, LRE 1451, 1461.
6 For the vexed question of the edict’s date, see Rémondon (1955). For papyrus fragments of the
edict, see now P.Oxy. lxiii 4400.
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