Capital in the Sixth Century: The Dynamics of Tax and Estate in Roman Egypt

The Dioscorus and the Apion dossiers represent a unique opportunity to bring quantitative methods into the study of ancient economies. With a combined total of more than a thousand chronologically overlapping documents from two different Egyptian nomes, many of these account logs, the material from these two dossiers sheds light on the micro-economic situation of large and small estates in late antique Egypt. This paper uses many of these accounts—including some still unpublished—in order to reach estimates of the available agricultural surplus, its distribution between tenants, owners and state, the level of economic rationality undergirding economic choices by large and small owners, and the evolution of the imperial taxation policy at a period when Justinian was working to win back the lost western provinces for the Roman realm. The traditional assumption that the grands domaines grew at the expense of the smaller landowners in this period is drawn into question, and the argument is made that large and small properties display complementary rather than antagonistic economic relationships. Close examination of the documents also provides an image of the ancient economy that contradicts familiar assumptions of stability: taxation evolved in response to political and military necessities, and economic actors had to adapt in order to thrive or at least survive in times of fiscal crisis. The article also provides a sense of provincial unity and of a surprisingly equitable and efficient implementation of tax processing in Egypt.