Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

egypt 629
one is that earlier household heads were more prominent than later ones
on the imperial political scene; Apion I and Strategius I must often have
been away from home on foreign assignment. It was once thought that
the later Apiones had retrenched, content with honorary dignities and
provincial or local offices, possibly becoming more Egyptian than their
predecessors, possibly reconverting to Monophysitism, choosing to live
in Egypt instead of the imperial capital. It is now thought that the family’s
glory remained undimmed and that its members continued to move in
Constantinople’s social circles, spending more time away from than in
Egypt. 78
What the papyri contribute to the corporate history of the Apion family
is a rough but, as new papyri come to be published, increasingly refined
chronological outline of births and deaths, of offices held and honours
bestowed. This in itself is an important contribution, but it is rather to an
understanding of the economic foundation for the Apion social and political
success, the family’s landed wealth and its management, that the papyri
contribute most. A full treatment cannot be given here, but a sketch of the
Apion holdings at Oxyrhynchus (the best-known) and the principal features
in their management cannot be avoided. 79
Although hard statistical evidence is lacking, one estimate, with an indirect
basis on payments in kind for the mbol (grain shipments for
Constantinople), puts the extent of Apion holdings in the Oxyrhynchite
nome and the neighbouring Cynopolite at 112,000 arouras (75,000 acres) out
of a total available 280,000 arouras, roughly two-fifths the arable land in
those districts. 80 The presence of twenty stewards, pronohta‹, in an
account for Apion holdings just in the Oxyrhynchite is another telling if
imprecise indication, as is the fact that each pronoêtês normally had charge
of several ‘estates’ (kt mata). 81 Apion holdings in the Arsinoite and
Herakleopolite nomes are assumed also to have been large, but the documents
give no inkling whatsoever of their measure. Whatever their size, the
usual view is that the Apion estates did not conform to modern notions of
what estates are. That is, they did not form in any given area a coherent territorial
block. Instead they were scattered through various rural hamlets
( po‹kia) in the orbits of nome villages. The spread of the Apion properties,
not only in the Oxyrhynchite and neighbouring Cynopolite districts,
but also in the Herakleopolite and Arsinoite, together with the frequent
absenteeism of the family heads, necessitated for their operation an extensive
private bureaucracy of agents (dioikhta‹ ), clerks (chartularii), stewards
(pronoêtai), and bankers. It also required a communications network that
included both an ‘express post’ (cursus velox) and a slow post by land, with
78 Gascou (1985) 74–5; Cameron (1979) 225–7, esp. 225 n. 22, 227 n. 34.
79 I rely heavily on Hardy (1931) for what follows. 80 Jones, LRE 780, 784.
81 P.Oxy. xvi 2032, i136(�WChr. 383).
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