Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

egypt 633
become vulnerable to famine. 97 The new view may in effect be more a
refinement than a rejection of the feudal model. Whether the new view is
right or not (it does seem to fly in the face of some of the legal evidence),
the old one was wrong in laying too much stress on, and generalizing too
much from, the evidence from Oxyrhynchus, to the neglect of other sites:
Hermopolis, for example, one of whose estates was judged on the basis of
a long agricultural ledger to have been ‘managed with great wisdom and
great humanity’, 98 and even more so the middle Egyptian village of
Aphrodito.
The sixth-century history of that village and its regional and imperial connections
can be partially reconstructed thanks to the survival of an archive
preserved by one Flavius Dioscorus. 99 Although Dioscorus himself was
probably not born until around 520, the archive includes a few papers
of earlier date. The family’s Egyptian roots are intimated by the name of
its earliest known member, ‘old man Psimanobet’, 100 who presumably
reached his prime in the mid fifth century. Psimanobet, whose Egyptian
name signified ‘son of the gooseherd’, had a son, Dioscorus, who in turn
had children, including a son named Apollos. It is this Apollos, father of
Flavius Dioscorus, whose activities come to light initially in the Dioscorus
papyri. He first appears in 514 as a village headman (prwtokwm thv) of
Aphrodito, appearing later, in the 530s, as a member of the village’s board
of ‘contributaries’ (suntelesta‹ ), jointly responsible for the village’s tax
collection. 101 He may also have served the local great landlord, count
Ammonius, as ‘collector’ (˛pod kthv); 102 but all the while he was operating
as an entrepreneur in his own right, taking land in lease concurrently
from many absentee landlords – from curiales of Antaiopolis, from bureaucrats
and lawyers from Panopolis and (probably) Antinoopolis, and from
one of the village churches. He sublet these parcels or saw by other means
to their being worked by a local force of free tenant farmers. 103 In the last
decade of his life, by 538, Apollos became a monk, 104 without fully retiring
from worldly business. The year 541 found him in the imperial capital in
the company of his fraternal nephew, a priest named Victor. There the two
villagers took out a loan of twenty solidi from a banker named Flavius
Anastasius, a ‘waiter of the sacred table’, due for repayment four months
97 See on the irrigation works, their operation and maintenance, Bonneau (1970), with special attention
to the Apiones. 98 Schnebel (1928).
99 Discussions of the village and its chief family: Bell (1944); Keenan (1984a); MacCoull, Dioscorus
esp. 1–15; Gagos and van Minnen (1994). Dioscorus’ career: PLRE iiia.404–6 (Fl. Dioscorus 5),
differing in some details from what is presented here. 100 P.Lond. v1691.15–16.
101 First appearance: P.Flor. iii 280; Apollos’ career: Keenan (1984b).
102 Hardy (1931) 144; Thomas (1987) 61, 72, approved by MacCoull (1993a) 21 n. 2. Count
Ammonius: PLRE iiia.56–7 (Fl. Ammonius I).
103 A critical document is P.Cair.Masp. iii 67327; discussion: Keenan (1985a), cf. Thomas (1987) 72–3.
104 PSI viii 933.
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