The formal transformation of the nome capitals into full Greek cities with Septimius Severus’ grant of councils at the start of the third century not only had major implications for their internal administration, now run by the class of councillors (bouleutai, Latin curiales; Bowman 1971; see Ch. 10 above), but also paved the way for the final dismantling of the ancient nome-based bureaucratic system. Along with new civic ambitions and the magistrates’ pride in their enhanced status went economic strains produced by these new responsibilities (the entrance fee for the council of Oxyrhynchos was at least 10,000 drachmas, and councillors faced a string of liturgical duties on top of their formal offices, such as supplying chaff to the army; P. Oxy. XLIV 3175, LXVII 4597, cf. 4608). The onset of political and financial instability throughout the empire before the system was fully established compounded the inherent fragility of the curial class (Bagnall 1993: 54-61, especially 56; cf. Tacoma 2006). While complaints against liturgical service were in part the predictable moans of an articulate bourgeoisie who wanted the prestige and autonomy of running their cities without being prepared to foot the bill, the lower ranks of curiales seem genuinely to have had difficulty meeting the financial demands made on them.
Viewed from the longue duree of Egyptian administrative history, the reforms of the 240s, although identified only quite recently, are as significant as those of Diocletian and his successors some fifty years later (Parsons 1967). The abolition of the basiliko-grammateus and komogrammateus, and amphodogrammateus in the cities, finally marks the end of the Egyptian tradition of scribal administration; they were replaced, respectively, by a liturgical college (Kruse 2002: 940-54), komarchs (reintroduced for the first time since the Ptolemaic Period: Thomas 1975a, Derda 2006: 182-96), and phylarchs (soon themselves replaced by systatai: Alston 2002: 145-6). Other aspects of these reforms, too, proved short-lived; the introduction of dekaprotoi to replace the former sitologoi in grain administration was reversed at the start of the fourth century (Thomas 1975a). The disappearance around the mid-third century of several types of administrative document characteristic of the earlier period may variously reflect the need for reform, the reforms themselves, or their failure; e. g. declarations of livestock (Kruse 2002: 182, 213-28), uninundated land (introduced 158, last attested 245), census declarations (257/8; Bagnall and Frier 1994: 9-11). These changes in documentation bespeak of a major upheaval in the administration at this period.
Diocletian’s general provincial reforms of 298 (creating many more provinces, grouped into dioceses, with military separated from civilian authority) initiated a series of experiments in the subdivision of Egypt, initially into two, later three, four, or even more provinces, which partly reflected the former epistrategiai and other, much older, regional identities (the Thebaid was consistently marked off from the north, and in the sixth century itself split into two). The civil governor of these smaller provinces was generally termed the praeses (but in some cases Prefect or corrector). After 381, an Augustal Prefect was placed in overall charge of the Egyptian provinces. In the fifth and sixth centuries, civil and military authority were once more sometimes combined, particularly in the post of dux et Augustalis, created as part of Justinian’s major administrative reform of Egypt in 538/9 in his Edict 13 (Palme 2007: 245-9, with a convenient diagram; cf. Bagnall 1993: 63-4).
Diocletian also completed the long process of ‘‘municipalization,’’ bringing Egypt’s internal administration in line with other provinces. Now, instead of the metropoleis being subordinate to the nome administration, the nome became the rural territory of its capital city, governed by officials appointed from its curial class. The logistes (Latin curator civitatis) was in overall charge, taking on many of the former duties of the strategos (Bowman 2008). A collection of texts relating to Oxyrhynchite logistai shows them hearing legal cases, receiving a doctor’s report on an injured person, and being notified by the relevant guilds of the prices for commodities from goatskins to gold (P. Oxy. vol. LIV). The riparius was in charge of law and order, and the syndikos had judicial powers (or ekdikos; Latin defensor civitatis. Bagnall 1993:165, P. Oxy. LIV 3771.3 note). Although we still regularly find strategoi involved in rural administration through the fourth century, this was now just the local name for a different official, the exactor (Thomas 1995. The strategod importance was arguably declining even during the third century; Thomas 2001: 1247-8).
Local administration underwent another major shake-up in 307/8, when the former toparchies (intermediate between villages and nome) were replaced by smaller units called pagi, each under the authority of a praepositus drawn from the local curial class and subordinate to the logistes. Thus documents from the fourth and fifth centuries relating to rural administration attest a significantly different set of offices from those familiar from the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods (and even the superficially familiar strategos and komarch conceal change or discontinuity). The vocabulary of government was now more obviously Roman, although the documents are still in Greek - some Latin terms, like praepositus and riparius, were simply transliterated).
The villages of late antique Egypt have been described as ‘‘rudderless and captainless vessels,’’ without communal identity or organization apart from the collective fiscal responsibility imposed from above (Bagnall 1993: 137), but village administration had always been primarily geared towards taxation, and from a more optimistic perspective the village koina (‘‘associations’’) did at least provide some local mechanism for sharing out the state’s fiscal demands. Thus the koinon of the villagers of Takona in the Oxyrhynchite nome took their turn in nominating the nomikarios to be responsible for paying their share of taxes in return for a salary (P. Oxy. LIX 3985, ad 473; the office of nomikarios had existed since 298). This propensity to form associations is epitomized by an agreement of the association of headmen, taxpayers, and landowners of Aphrodito with its association of shepherds and field guards for them to guard the village estates (P. Cair. Masp. I 67001, ad 514). Aphrodito was an untypical village in having formerly been a nome capital, but contemporary Oxyrhynchite texts suggest that the villages of that nome were comparable both in social composition and organization (Keenan 2007; Rowlandson 2007a: 215-17).
Being a seat of provincial government, as for instance Oxyrhynchos was for the province of Arcadia (Middle Egypt) in the fifth and sixth centuries, enhanced a city’s prestige and prosperity, from the presence of the praeses" large staff (officiales; see e. g. P. Oxy. LIX 3986). Despite the image of the late Roman Empire as overburdened with bureaucracy, the actual proportion of government officials in relation to overall population was much lower than in the modern world (Palme 2007: 251, estimates no more than 1 per 2,400 inhabitants; cf. Bagnall 1993: 66). Even though land registers and other evidence for their comparative wealth suggest that the officiales were not systematically better off than the civic elite, government service was perceived as a ‘‘gravy train,’’ with lucrative sportulae (‘‘tips’’) supplementing the officials’ modest basic pay, and exemption from liturgies providing an avenue of escape from the burdens of council service (Palme 2007: 250-4).
After the late fourth century our documentation for city administration shrinks drastically, although cities and their councils continued to function (van Minnen 2007). The large religious and secular ‘‘houses’’ (oikoi) that characterize Byzantine Egypt, like that of the Apiones, were much better equipped than the cities in economic resources and organization to provide an effective fiscal and administrative rural infrastructure; thus, although in a sense ‘‘private’’ estates, they are found taking on ‘‘public’’ administrative roles such as tax collection (Gascou 1985). However impressive the Roman policy of urbanization was in other respects, the reliance on cities for administration of the chora was not a success.
World History
