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Document Details :

Title: Romans and Land Property Rights in Ptolemaic Egypt
Subtitle: The Identification of Lucius Septimius
Author(s): ROSSI, Lucia
Journal: Ancient Society
Volume: 44    Date: 2014   
Pages: 127-147
DOI: 10.2143/AS.44.0.3044802

Abstract :
Economic and political relationships between Rome and Egypt significantly changed during the first century BC, particularly since Sulla’s intervention in Ptolemaic affairs. The events that occurred during the 50s show the most significant consequences in military and political balance in Egypt: the presence of Rome was not only linked to commercial activities, it also appeared in the Ptolemaic army and in the management of land property in the Egyptian chora. In this paper I will focus on the identification of Lucius Septimius, a landowner attested in a land register (P. Lond. II 195) dating from the Julio-Claudian age. Lucius Septimius’ property successively belonged to Gallia Polla and finally to Marcus Antonius Pallas, an imperial freedman owner of an οὐσία. Literary evidence reveals interesting information about a Lucius Septimius, who was a council member of Ptolemy XIII and tribunus militum in the Ptolemaic army during the second half of the first century BC. Papyrological data as well as literary evidence allow us to identify the landowner with the tribunus militum of 55 BC. This instance is not isolated and can be placed in the more general context of increasing Roman interest in Alexandria and the Egyptian chora at the end of the Republic.

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