Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

egypt 615
some of the Egyptian provinces – Aegyptus, Augustamnica, Thebaid – had
been divided in two. By Justinian’s reforms, the Augustal prefect was
deprived of control over the Egyptian diocese. His exercise of military and
civil authority was restricted to Aegyptus I and II, and he had a subordinate
civil governor for Aegyptus II. An Augustal duke of the Thebaid had military
and civil authority over that province, but with subordinate civil
governors for both its upper (southern) and lower (northern) halves. Libya
had a duke with a subordinate civil governor.
For the remaining three provinces – Augustamnica, Pentapolis, Arcadia
– speculation is needed, because the parts of Edict XIII that concern
Augustamnica are damaged, while those that concerned Pentapolis and
Arcadia are lost. It has been assumed that Augustamnica, subdivided into
I and II, was treated like the Thebaid, Pentapolis – if it was included in the
reform – like Libya. 7 The papyri are not as helpful as one might have
expected in filling the gaps, if not for Pentapolis, 8 at least for Augustamnica
and Arcadia. It is clear none the less from papyri of (mainly) Oxyrhynchite
provenance that Arcadia was not subdivided. It had a civil governor, a
praeses; papyri available to date do not mention a military governor, a dux
Arcadiae, until a.d. 636. 9 It is therefore possible that Arcadia’s treatment in
Edict XIII was unlike that of any other province. It may simply have had a
civil governor with some coercive police authority; its duke may have been
a later creation, perhaps in response to crisis. 10
In theory, the Egyptian provinces were independent of one another and
individually subject, again as for most of the fourth century, to the praetorian
prefect of the East. In practice, however, it is difficult to assess the
extent to which the subdivided provinces – Aegyptus, Augustamnica,
Thebaid – were effectively distinct; and without question, the collection of
grain for Constantinople, eight million artabs a year according to Edict XIII
(chapter 8), required co-operation among all the Egyptian provinces, under
the general supervision of the Augustal prefect in Alexandria. Alexandria,
strictly speaking, was limited to being the senior capital of the two provinces
of Aegyptus; but regardless of its restricted provincial embrace, it
remained Egypt’s chief city and one of the great metropolises of the
eastern empire, an often turbulent centre of education and religion, a thriving
centre for manufacture, banking, commerce, shipping and law. 11
Each Egyptian governor, whether Augustal prefect, duke or praeses, had
of course his own staff (officium, ta* xiv). A typical civil staff like that of the
7 Jones, LRE 281. 8 Pentapolis in the papyri: P.Cair.Masp. ii 67168 – a rare glimpse.
9 P.Prag. i64. 10 Keenan (1977).
11 Bowman (1986) ch. 7; Chuvin, Chronicle esp. 105–11; The Coptic Encyclopedia (New York 1991)
i.95–103, s.v. Alexandria in late antiquity (H. Heinen); P.Oxy. i 144 (�FIRA iii.156) and 151;
P.Cair.Masp. ii 67126, with Keenan (1992); PSI i76, with Keenan (1978).
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