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The Administrators of Roman Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

P. A. Brunt
Affiliation:
Brasenose College, Oxford

Extract

Before A.D. 70 the prefecture of Egypt was the greatest prize in an equestrian career—four praetorian prefects were promoted to it—and thereafter it ranked only just below the praetorian prefecture, to which no fewer than fourteen governors of Egypt were advanced between 70 and 235. In the other great provinces of the empire legati Augusti pro praetore could leave finance to the procurators, while proconsuls perhaps soon came to retain little of their original responsibility for the collection of taxes, and had no army to command. The prefect of Egypt combined fiscal with military and judicial functions. So did the presidial procurators of such areas as Mauretania or Noricum, but the importance of Egypt and the complexity of its administration set the prefect far above them. Egypt was probably the most populous province in the empire and contributed more than any other to the revenues, partly in grain that provided much of Rome's essential food, and its exploitation was a vast public enterprise of which the prefect was the managing director. He also had to do justice not only under Roman law but under the traditional laws of the native Egyptians and of the Greek settlers, among subjects who were both litigious and turbulent. Only defence against external attack was a simpler problem than in other frontier regions.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © P. A. Brunt 1975. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Beside usual abbreviations, I use the following in this article:

Chalon = G. Chalon, L'édit de Ti. Iulius Alexander (1964).

Humbert = M. Humbert, ‘La Juridiction du Préfet d'Egypte d'Auguste à Dioclétien’, ap. F. Burdeau et al., Aspects de l'Empire Romain (1964), 95–147.

Pflaum = H.-G. Pflaum, Les Carrières procuratoriennes équestres (1960).

Reinmuth = O. W. Reinmuth, The Prefect of Egypt from Augustus to Diocletian, Klio, Beiheft xxxiv (1935).

Stein, Präfekten = A. Stein, Die Präfekten von Ägypten in der römischen Kaiserzeit (1950).

Stein, Unters. = A. Stein, Untersuchungen zur Gesch. u. Verwaltung Ägyptens (1915).

Wallace = S. L. Wallace, Taxation in Egypt from Augustus to Diocletian (1938).

Prefects are listed and numbered in the Appendix. All dates are A.D., unless otherwise indicated. I am indebted for additions and corrections to Fergus Millar, P. J. Parsons and J. R. Rea; the opinions and errors that remain are my own. I deliberately refer to Egypt as a province, in conformity with all ancient sources (quoted by Stein, Unters. 92 f.), against the opinion of Stein and many others, for which Stein gives two reasons: (i) Egypt had no koinon (as if that were not true of nearly all provinces in 30 B.C.); (ii) it lacked ‘die Gliederung nach der Gemeindeorganisation’: but even if Egyptian local government is unique, no presupposition about the nature of such government is implicit in ‘provincia’, for whose derivation and meaning cf. Mommsen, St. R. I3, 51. See further JRS lvi (1966), 90 f.

2 Appendix nos. 7, 12, 22; cf. the appointment of Macro in 38.

3 Nos. 26, 30, 33, 36, 41, 46, 53, 58, 64, 65, 75, 77, 83, 84. Cf. n. 20.

4 Dio liii, 15, 3.

5 Jos., BJ ii, 385 gives Egypt without Alexandria 7,500,000 inhabitants from the poll-tax returns; according to Diodorus i, 31 there were not less than 7,000,000 in Egypt in his day. On my estimate (Italian Manpower, ch. 10) Italy had not many more inhabitants under Augustus. We can only guess at the population of most other parts of the empire.

6 Wallace, ch. 18. On a minimum estimate the revenue of Ptolemy Auletes (c. 55 B.C. ) is given as 36 m. denarii, at a time when Roman provincial revenue amounted to 85 m., or on a more literal interpretation of Plut., Pomp. 45, 3, 135 m. But Ptolemy Philadelphus' revenue had been reckoned as equivalent to 88 m., and by more efficient administration (cf. H. I. Bell, CAH x, 292, 313) Augustus must have extracted more than Auletes.

7 Wallace l.c. Jos. BJ ii, 383, 386, says that Africa supplied two thirds, Egypt one third of Rome's grain. In fact there were certainly imports from other sources (Pliny, NH xviii, 66), and the truth may be only that Africa and Egypt were the main sources at the ratio of 2:1. Epit. de Caes. 1, 6 may be wholly unreliable.

8 Contrast Pflaum, 331 on T. Furius Victorinus (no. 54): ‘administrateur financier habile, chef énergique et courageux’ (though nothing whatever is known of him but the bare facts of his career), or Reinmuth, 4, cf. 128: ‘the prefects of Egypt were, by and large, men of outstanding ability’. As if in proof of this assertion, he notes that several were, or affected to be, men of letters (nos. 1, 23, 40, 47, 60, 62; he might have added 2, 38, 48) or jurists (no. 54; add 68). (Literary gifts do not imply administrative competence, nor of course exclude it.) Balbillus (no. 23) perhaps owed his appointment mainly to Agrippina's influence (Tac., Ann. xiii, 21, 6–22).

9 See n. 64.

10 Brunt, , Historia x (1961), 189 f.Google Scholar

11 Brunt, JRS lxiv (1974), 10 f.

12 Chalon, 43 f., following Wilcken; cf. E. G. Turner, JRS xliv (1954), 60.

13 C. Vibius Msurimus (Stein, Präfekten, 52; Sherwin-White, The Letters of Pliny, 210, 481 disposes of the doubts raised by Pflaum) and the unnamed Severan prefect who was convicted of falsifying his records (Dig. xlviii, 10, 1, 4). I overlooked Vibius in my article cited in n. 10.

14 Naturally the emperors heard representations from Alexandria, and like Trajan, might show a ‘generalized benevolence’ (P. J. Parsons on P. Oxy. 3022); P. Oxy. 3020 also suggests the possibility of complaints against the administration of the Idios Logos, but it was another matter to bring formal charges or complaints against a prefect.

15 See esp. the edict of Ti. Iulius Alexander, and Chalon passim, esp. 239 f.; cf. edicts of 42 (Smallwood, Docs. illustr. Principates of Gaius etc. 381), 49 (ib. 382; note reference to edict of Magius Maximus), 54 (ib. 383), 133–7 (Wilcken, Chr. 26 and PSI 446) and 206 (P. Oxy. 1100). The encomium on a Strategus for not taking bribes or resorting to illegal violence illustrates the lowness of prevalent standards during the long prefecture of Galerius, see SEG viii, 527 = Ehrenberg and Jones, Documents, no. 320(a).

16 See Chalon, pp. 72, 103, 108, 145 and 154 on vv. 14 and 26–32. On Nero's exactions see Brunt, , Latomus xviii (1959), 556 fGoogle Scholar.

17 It was not my purpose in Historia x (1961)Google Scholar to deny this, nor to suggest that emperors did not normally prefer such men, when they could find them.

18 No doubt a man who had not been immersed in the routine of Egyptian administration might have examined it with a fresh and critical eye, and made improvements so far as he was permitted. But the edict of Ti. Iulius Alexander, vv. 3–10, indicates that the prefect had little discretion. He was appointed to work the system, not to remodel it. Cf. Chalon 238. P. Fay. 21 (p. 138) illustrates the kind of limited administrative reform a prefect could initiate.

19 Sen., ad Helviam 19, 6 (cf. Stein, Präfekten, 25), gives 16 years, presumably reckoning inclusively.

20 Excluding Cleander, we know 11 praetorian prefects by name from his reign (Passerini, Le Coorti pretorie, 304 f.), but HA, Comm. 6, 6 alleges that he changed them ‘per horas ac dies’, and though among those recorded only one ex-prefect of Egypt is found, probably others were promoted to the guard from Egypt; this may help to explain the rapid changes in the government of Egypt.

21 Despite doubts of Sherwin-White, PBSR xv (1939), 16, n. 34.

22 The first known Epistrategus (Pflaum, p. 1091) is apparently peregrine. Freedmen: Plut., Mor. 207B; Wilcken, Chr. 443 with his commentary; Dio lviii, 19, 6. Hiberus, acting prefect in A.D. 32, must have had a high post, though hardly that of Iuridicus, the substantive rank of acting prefects in 176, 219 (?) and 225 (Appendix).

23 See Pflaum's lists of the civilian officials, pp. 1083–92; 1107 f. A prefect of XXII Deìotarìana (ILS 2687) is probably Augustan or Tiberian. Ritterling, RE xii, 1490 f.; 1513 f.; 1795 f. lists commanders of legions of Egypt, who are sometimes styled ‘praefecti castrorum’ or ‘pr. exercitus qui est in Aegypto’ (cf. RE xxiv, 1287 f.). Pflaum, p. 76, says that this post customarily marked the end of a man's career. For this generalization he cites (‘surtout’) one instance (ILS 2696, Claudian); one might perhaps add the anonymous of OGIS 586 = IGR iii 1015 (Flavian), but he had not certainly ended his career. Contrast not only Aeternius Fronto (my no. 31) but Pflaum, nos. 109, 195 and probably 211; moveover, some equestrian prefects of legions raised by Severus go further. The fact is that there are few of these commanders whose careers are known fully or even in part. It may be significant that after c. 100 in the numerous cursus inscriptions of men who rose to high rank a legionary post in Egypt occurs only once (Pflaum no. 109—pr. ann.), but such an argument e silentio has no force for the Julio-Claudian period.

24 Stein, Präfekten 14–17.

25 M. Vandoni, Gli epistrategi nell'Egitto grecoromano (1971).

26 Pflaum on n. 192 bis; he did not know that the same man appears once more as Archiereus in Feb./March 193, P. J. Parsons, Chron. d'Ég. xlix (1974), 135. Lysimachus: P. R. Swarney, The Ptolemaic and Roman Idios Logos (1970), 84, cf. pp. 127 f. for up-to-date list of these officials. Military officers: Devijver, H., in Temporini, H. (ed.), Aufstieg u. Niedergang der röm. Welt, ii, 1 (1974), 452 f.Google Scholar, esp. 463 f.

27 The Arabarch controlled the collection of tolls on the route to the Red Sea (OGIS 674), but was not always an Eques, cf. Jos., AJ xviii, 159; 259; xix, 276; xx, 100, 147; Schürer, , Gesch. des Jüdischen Volkes, iii 4, 132Google Scholar.

28 Parássoglou, G. M., Zeitschr. f. Pap. u. Epigr. xiii (1974), 32 f.Google Scholar lists the Archiereis. He believes the post to be Hadrianic, and therefore excludes Balbillus.

29 He came from Cuicul in Numidia, cf. Pflaum, no. 242 for his brother.

30 On the office and its holders see Calabi, I., Aegyptus xxxii (1952), 406 f.Google Scholar; to her list add Ti. Cl. Serenus between 139 and 144 (P. Mil. Vogl. 229), Ti. Claudius Alexander, 2nd century (BGU 2062), and Calpurnius Petronianus in 225 (P. Oxy. 2705). In 120–39, 12 Archidicasts are attested, and in both 143–4 and 159–60 3. Her doubts on the Roman citizenship of some men who have Roman nomina do not seem justified in view of the undoubted equestrian status of the 4 ex-praefecti cohortis and the hereditary dignity of some families represented (see e.g. P. Oxy. 1434 with commentary). Cf. Devijver o.c. (n. 26), 483–90.

31 cf. G. E. F. Chilver, AJP lxx (1949), 16 f.

32 cf. the promotion of praetorian prefects to Egypt and vice versa, nn. 1 and 2.

33 E. Birley, Roman Britain and the Roman Army (1953, 137 f. argues that ‘a period of three or four years' service in each post can have been by no means unusual’, but the evidence he cited is clearly too scanty to justify fixing an average.

34 Dio lxxi, 5, 2.

35 L'Armée rom. d'Égypte (1918), 102 f., brought up-to-date on the number of auxilia by Pflaum, H.-G., Syria xliv (1967), 339 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 For their role in jurisdiction cf. nn. 44, 47; in epikrisis, P. Oxy. xii, p. 149; in the census, Hunt-Edgar, Select Papyri, no. 220; police and related duties, see documents listed and transcribed in S. Daris, Documenti per la storia dell' esercito romano in Egitto (1964), 153–69. Cf. Mitteis, Grundz., 28–30; 33–6; Wilcken, Grundz. 396 f.

37 Dio lxxi, 4. Bucoli: RE iii, 1013.

38 Pflaum, no. 315; see now P. J. Parsons, Proc. of XIIth Conference of Papyrology (1970), 389 f.

39 Mitteis, Grundz., 24 ff.; Coroi, Actes du Ve Congrès Int. de Pap. (1938), 615 f.; Humbert, esp. 100 f., who thinks that only the Idios Logos had jurisdiction independent of the prefect, but argues (109 f.) for permanent delegations to certain officials, cf. n. 52 below. Kupiszewski, H., Journ. Jur. Pap. vii/viii (1953/1954), 191 f.Google Scholar maintains that the Iuridicus had jurisdiction committed to him by the emperor; Strabo xvii, 1, 2 and ILS 2691 strongly suggest this, and all other arguments on each side seem to me indecisive. But no doubt the prefect could overrule the Iuridicus; the Idios Logos too was subject to his authority, cf. edict of Ti. Iulius Alexander, vv. 37–45, and Gnomon Idiologi, proem. On the Archidicast cf. n. 30. On petitions, Humbert, 131 f. See, most recently, E. Seidl, Rechtsgesch. Agyptens ah röm. Provinz (1974), 93 f.

40 F. Schulz, Hist. of Rom. Legal Science, 108 f. Quintilian argued that the ideal orator should be expert in law (xii, 3), but equally in moral philosophy (ib. 2) and history (4); his ideal had never been realized (x, 2, 9), and it is clear from much that he says that advocates of his day, often appearing before ‘imperiti’ (ii, 17, 27), relied like Cicero, still the best model for Quintilian, on appeals to plausibility or emotion rather than to juristic arguments. Cicero too had insisted on the necessity of the ideal orator knowing the law (de orat. i, 18, cf. 166–201; Orator 120; Part. Or. 98 f.); in fact it is clear that die views and practice ascribed to M. Antonius (de orat. i, 234 f. esp. 248–53, cf. 172) were more typical (cf. Part. Or. 100). The ῥήτορες or συνήγοροι of Egyptian trials can be distinguished from νομικοί (SB 7696, cf. Seidl o.c. (n. 39), 115 f.).

41 Stein, Unters. 194, citing Hirschfeld, Kaiserliche Verwaltungsbeamten 2, 428 f. But pace Hirschfeld, as Pflaum's lists of imperial consiliarii and of advocati fisci in Rome and Italy (pp. 1024 f., 1033, 1104) show, very few of them are known to have been promoted except to specialized legal posts; the same is true of provincial advocati fisci, who are hardly attested before the third century. Stein also relied on Mitteis, Reichsrecht u. Volksrecht, 193 and Dig. i, 22, cf. p. 134 below.

42 Brunt, , Latomus xxv (1966), 461 f.Google Scholar, where it is argued that in some reigns they perhaps did not even exercise fiscal jurisdiction.

43 Of 9 a libellis before 235 known to Pflaum (pp. 1021, 1104, cf. 994) 3 were jurists. Yet the freedmen predecessors of these equestrian officials can hardly have been iurisperiti, and legal attainments may never have been indispensable. Of 14 attested ab epistulis or ab epistulis Latinis (pp. 1020 f., 1104) 3 again were jurists (Pflaum, nos. 142, 172, 287). Birley, o.c. (n. 33), 142 f., thinks they needed military experience, but on patently inadequate grounds. Of Equites entitled simply ab ep., Pflaum, no. 156 had ‘great military experience’; not so all the others whose careers are known, nos. 60, 96, 105, 142, 271 (cf. p. 994), 287. Once again, freedmen ab epistulis had been neither lawyers nor soldiers. On rhetors as ab ep. Gr. see Pflaum, p. 684.

44 Mitteis, Chr. 84 (Humbert, 110 argues that this pr. coh. had a permanent delegation); 90 (trib. as iudex datus); P. Teb. 488 (tribune); P. Oxy. 237, viii, 3 (ἐπάρχῳ στόλου καὶ [ἐπὶ τῶ]ν κεκριμένων τῷ τειμιω—[τά]τῳ); 1637 (centurion as iudex datus). See Seidl o.c. (n. 39), 102 on P. Mich. iii, 159. Cf. n. 36.

45 Taubenschlag, Law of Graeco-Roman Egypt 2 (1955), ch. i; Seidl o.c. (n. 39), esp. Part iv. J. Modrzejewski, XIIth Int. Congress of Papyrology (1970), 317 f. seems to hold that all pre-Roman laws had only the status of customs after the conquest which acquired full legal validity as Provinzialrecht only if confirmed by Roman edicts or decreta; hence we cannot speak of decisions in Roman courts which set aside such customs as violations of law (cf. n. 54). Yet in P. Oxy, 2757 a Flavian prefect consults Areius the ‘nomikos’ about what the (Egyptian) ‘laws command’. Obviously both rulers and governed must have started from the presumption that the relevant local ‘nomoi’ would remain in force, unless and until modified for specific reasons. On Modrzejewski's own showing Roman courts very commonly upheld them (339 f.).

46 Kunkel, W., Herkunft u. soziale Stellung der röm. Juristen 2, 269 f.Google Scholar; 355 f. (add P. Oxy. 2757), on jurists in Egypt; ib. 331 ff. on assessors. The xenokritai of P. Oxy. 3016, whatever they may be, can hardly be relevant.

47 Nomikoi: P. Oxy. 2757; 3015 (also for consilium); Mitteis, , Chr. 372, iii, 18Google Scholar. Consilium of Caecina Tuscus: P. Fouad 21, cf. Balogh, E. and Pflaum, H.-G., Rev. hist. de droit fr. et étr. xxx (1952), 117 f.Google Scholar The putative Alexandrians might be the archidikast, hypomnematographos and eisagogeus, for whom see commentary on P. Oxy. 1434; the last sits on the consilium in P. Strasb. 179. A pr. alae as consiliarius in BGU 288. References to the prefect consulting with his consiliarii, or employing his ‘friends’ in judicial functions (e.g. P. Oxy. 2754) do not then prove that he had expert jurists on his staff. Seidl o.c. (n. 39) produces no new testimony for his assumption (233) that the prefects had jurists from Rome at their side.

48 Private collections of rulings on particular legal topics (e.g. Mitteis, Chr. 370, 372, 374, cf. also P. Oxy. 237, vi, 28; vii, 12 f., Humbert 118) may have been extracted from official archives. On the sources of law in Roman Egypt cf. esp. the proem to the Gnomon, and see Seidl o.c. (n. 39), Part I; on the supposed provincial edict, Modrzejewski o.c. (n. 45), 341 f.

49 Legal textbooks: Schulz o.c. (n. 40), 154 f.; we need not assume that there were not other early works, of which we happen to know nothing. Seidl, St. Paoli, 659 f., suggests that some prefects' decisions, e.g. P. Ryl. 75 (A.D. 150–2), were founded on regulae. von Uxkull-Gyllenband, W., BGU v, 2, pp. 111Google Scholar, points out that the Gnomon has nothing on the Idios Logos' administration of land, his chief business. (On this perhaps he needed less guidance than on legal problems.) Fragments of juristic writings on papyri are of late-third-century date, see Taubenschlag, o.c. (n. 45), 36 f.

50 Flacc. 130–4. Lucian, Apol. 12 says that he had a high salary for the task of bringing cases to the court (τὰς δίκας εἰσάγειν) and placing them in the right order (τάξιν αὐταῖς τὴν προσήκουσαν ἐπιτιθέναι) and keeping accurate records, especially of the decisions (τὰς τοῦ ἄρχοντος γνώσεις). It is to be noted that Lucian was no lawyer. Whether he held the same post as Lampon—nothing shows that it was equestrian—and what it was called, we do not know. Cf. Stein, Unters. 187 f.

51 Oates, J. F. et al. , Yale Pap. in the Beinecke Library (1967), 61Google Scholar.

52 Lewis, N., Rev. hist. de droit fr. et étr. (1972), 5 f.Google Scholar; Li (1973), 5 f. In P. Ryl. 74 (probably A.D. 133) the prefect announces that he has no time to hold a conventus for the Thebaid, and no need, since most cases have been settled by the local authorities. In one way or another much more judicial business was evidently decided by subordinates than some modern accounts suggest.

53 P. Oxy. 237, vi, 6 f., on which see Mitteis, Grundz. 27; 38, n. 3.

54 Ibid. vi, 17 f., vii, 13—viii, 7. Cf. n. 45 on the ‘violation’ of Egyptian law.

55 Humbert, ch. ii.

56 It seems to me clearly impossible, from the evidence and arguments adduced by Birley o.c. (n. 33). 133 f. and by Pflaum, Proc. Équ., 210 f., to determine even the average age at which men entered the equestrian service. No inference is valid from the senatorial offices to which some were advanced, since we cannot tell if they held such offices at the minimum age. Nor do we know whether men whose age at some point of their career is recorded or calculable were typical, nor whether they had been continuously employed. No doubt ex-centurions had usually had considerable service before promotion to equestrian offices, but ILS 2641 does not imply that they could not become primipili before the age of 50: ‘vix. ann. xlix sanctissime et prope diem consummationis primi pili sui debitum naturae persolvit’—this only shows (a) that the primipilate was the apex of a centurion's career; (b) that this individual was 49, when the commission had been issued but not yet taken up. Moreover, centurions ‘ex eq. R.’ were surely not alone in starting as officers; others of good family, but below equestrian status, may also have done so. Finally, no ruling could bind the emperor to abstain from authorizing exceptionally rapid promotions.

57 Similarly Marcius Turbo, still an ordinary centurion in 104/5 at earliest, and not pp. bis before 109/10, became praetorian prefect in 119 (Pflaum no. 94).

58 Some parallels from Pflaum: no. 71 held 5 procuratorial posts, 103 to 117 at latest; no. 73, after militiae equ. 102–6, holds 3 other posts before the procuratorship of Mauretania Tingitana, attested in 114; no. 104 held 3 military and 4 procuratorial posts, 106–28; no. 106 bis held 8 civil posts in perhaps 22 years; no. 109 rose from a praetorian tribunate through 5 other posts to be pr. ann. in probably 18 years (129–47); no. 114 was Iuridicus 21 years after being Epistrategus; no. 116 was pr. alae at latest in 117 and held his third procuratorial post (Asia) in 131–2; no. 138 was praetorian prefect 13/4 years after a praetorian tribunate; no. 180 perhaps embarked on the militiae eq. c. 160 and became praetorian prefect in 189. I find it hard to generalize from such evidence.

59 For a brief survey see A. H. M. Jones, The Roman Economy (1974), 161 f.; most of the relevant notes there are mine.

60 Jones, Later Roman Empire, 62–4.

61 The most lucid introduction to Ptolemaic and Roman taxation in Egypt remains that in Wilcken, Gr. Ostraka i, 130–663, cf. his Grundz. 169 ff. Wallace's account of the Roman system was exhaustive in its day.

62 Jones o.c. (n. 60), 456–9; 727 f.; 749; 760 f.

63 Reinmuth, 75–7, see esp. Hunt-Edgar, Select Papyri, no. 219.

64 Dio lvii, 10, 5: Αἰμιλίῳ γοῦν Ῥήκτῳ χρήματά ποτε αὐτῷ πλείω παρὰ τὸ τεταγμένον ἐκ τῆς Αἰγύπτου ἧς ἧρχε πέμψαντι ἀντεπέστειλεν ὅτι “κείρεσθαί μου τὰ πρόβατα, ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ ἀποξύρεσθαι βούλομαι.” Wilcken, , Gr. Ostr. i, 497Google Scholar, and others, infer that the emperor ‘fixed, apparently each year, the total sum to be produced from Egypt … which the prefect could not vary downwards, nor at least under good emperors as in this case upwards’. But though it would have been useful for the emperor to know a year in advance the yield of the Egyptian revenues, and though that of the land taxes and rents could have been roughly estimated on the basis of annual episkepseis, some revenues e.g. from customs and sales-taxes, would inevitably have varied; if they proved exceptionally buoyant, the prefect cannot have been forbidden to give the benefit to the Roman treasury, and would hardly have been instructed, in case of a short-fall, to make up τὸ τεταγμένον by additional levies. That phrase can mean ‘what is prescribed’ rather than ‘what is assessed’. Probably Rectus did take credit for keeping up revenues, by unauthorized levies, in a year in which the harvest was poor and the people therefore less able to meet demands of all kinds, cf. n. 66.

65 Edict of Ti. Iulius Alexander, vv. 4; 45–51; P. Oxy. 899; 916.

66 BGU 903; the tax in grain would automatically have fallen, in proportion to the land found to be under water or dry, but in these circumstances difficulties would also have arisen in collection of capitation and other taxes from an impoverished peasantry, and Bassaeus no doubt intended to mitigate the normal effects of the μερισμοὶ ἀνακεχωρηκότων or ἀπόρων (Wallace, 137 ff.). The great plague may explain Bassaeus' measure.

67 Reinmuth ch. iii, cf. 65 f.

68 ibid. 127 f.

69 SB 7378 (A.D. 103); P. Amh. 68 verso (Flavian); P. Teb. 336 (189–90); P. Oxy. 1032 (156).

70 A. von Domaszewski—B. Dobson, Rangordnung des röm. Heeres, 28 f.; Lesquier o.c. (n. 35), 117. Pflaum n. 56 is isolated as adiutor.

71 Boulvert, G., Esclaves et affranchis impériaux (1970)Google Scholar, offers the best account of their functions, and Weaver, P. R. C., Familia Caesaris (1972), Part iiiCrossRefGoogle Scholar, of their careers, Cf. now Boulvert, , Domestique et fonctionnaire sous le haut-empire rom. (1974), 111–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Philo was not thinking of officials like Lampon, who were not employed in the fiscal administration (n. 50).

72 Weaver 8 f. Of 607 dated documents cited in his App. ii only 11 are papyri.

73 Weaver pp. 244, 246, 249, 253, 276 f. cites inscriptions which mention more than one post. Of 23 tabularii (246 f.) only 1 is recorded to have acted as such in more than one province, of 7 a commentariis again only one (249); transfers seem to be fairly often attested in higher grades, and never in lower.

74 A. Šwiderek, Chron. d'Ég. xlv (1970), 157 f.; SB 9248 is decisive. She lists nine known documentary references to Oikonomoi. The edict of Ti. Iulius Alexander, v. 22 illustrates their importance, as well as that of (probably freedmen) procurators.

75 Weaver o.c. (n. 71), 200–23 (though he does not explain why vicarii were thus promoted).

76 Chalon on the edict of Ti. Iulius Alexander vv. 35–40, 51–9.

77 It was obviously not by legitimate means that Musicus, ‘dispensator ad fiscum Gallicum provinciae Lugdunensis’ under Tiberius, acquired the wealth to buy plate for which he needed two vicarii as ab argento (for a parallel cf. Pliny, NH xxxiii, 145), or that a vicarius vilici Aug. could pay for a teloneum in Africa (CIL viii, 12314). Cf. Smallwood o.c. (n. 15), 408, and for the late Empire RE iii, 1295 f. (Seeck).

78 C. Cassius Longinus (PIR 2 C 501). Javolenus Priscus (ib. I, 14), L. Neratius Priscus, Kunkel, o.c. (n. 46), 144 f.; Salvius Iulianus (ibid. 157 f.).

79 By such advice the praetors must have built up the ius honorarium.