Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

egypt 627
Monophysite and Chalcedonian bishops at Constantinople. Shortly after,
he began service as the empire’s chief financial officer, count of the sacred
largesses. Besides duties that must have included overseeing the financing
of the construction of St Sophia, Strategius served on several occasions as
Justinian’s roving ambassador. It is assignments like these that suggest that
the ordinary consulship bestowed in 539 upon his son, Flavius Apion (II),
was a reward or memorial for the father’s distinguished career, an honour
to the family more than to Apion the man, who – to judge from the portrait
medallion on his consular diptych, discovered in 1860 in the cathedral
at Oviedo (Spain) – was still quite young, destined to survive his own consular
year by nearly forty more. 62
With this appointment, the Apion family reached its political zenith.
Flavius Apion II first appears in the papyri in 543 as consul ordinarius and great
landlord at Oxyrhynchus. As late as 577 he appears as former ordinary
consul, patrician and great landlord. His death fell between 577 and 579. 63 It
is to be presumed that Apion spent the earlier part of his public career in
the imperial capital, but returned to Egypt toward mid century, 548/50, to
take up his post as duke of the Thebaid. 64 After that, he served for a long
time as pagarch in the pagarchy of the Arsinoites and Theodosiopolites (the
old Arsinoite nome) where some of his ancestral property lay. In this office,
his primary responsibility was the collection of taxes for those parts of the
district that were not specifically excluded from his authority by imperial
grants of ‘autopragia’. 65 Apion appears first in this office, and also as magister
militum, in 556; subsequently as pagarch and ex-consul. 66 The extent to
which he exercised his duties as pagarch by proxy, rather than in person, is
an insoluble problem. He was still pagarch at the time of his death, by which
time (unless it was a posthumous honour) he had also been named ‘first
patrician’ (protopatricius), perhaps implying his presidency of the senate in
Constantinople. 67 Following his death, his estate went undivided to his heirs,
the most important of whom was his son, another Strategius, Strategius II,
about whom little is known. 68
It is the usually unnamed heirs of Apion II who prevail in the family’s
documentary record from 579 till 586/7, when they at last escape from anonymity.
69 When they do, the heirs turn out to be Flavia Praeiecta, a woman
62 Hardy (1931) 32; Gascou (1985) 65; PLRE iiib.1200–1 (Strategius). Apion diptych: CIL ii.2699�
Dessau, ILS i.1310; medallion: Schefold (1945) with plates 3 and 4; career: PLRE iiia.96–8 (Fl.
Strategius Apion Strategius Apion 3). 63 P.Oxy. xvi 1985; 1896; i135.
64 P.Oxy. i130, with P.Lond. v 1708.79 and the long discussion in the relevant note, together with
Gascou’s equally long discussion of the attendant dating (and other) problems: (1985) 66 n. 370.
65 Liebeschuetz (1974). Synoptic discussion and full bibliography: The Coptic Encyclopedia vi.1871–2,
s.v. Pagarch (B. Verbeeck). 66 BGU i 305, CPR xiv 10.
67 P.Oxy. xvi 1976 (582) and other documents; Gascou (1985) 66 and references in n. 374.
68 P.Oxy. xvi 1829 is the key proof, though far from problem-free, of Strategius II’s position as principal
heir to Apion II. 69 P.Oxy. i135, many other refs. in Gascou (1985) 68 n. 382.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008