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Document Details :

Title: Villages and Patronages in Fourth-Century Egypt
Subtitle: The Case of P.Ross.Georg. 3.8
Author(s): RATHBONE, Dominic
Journal: Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists
Volume: 45    Date: 2008   
Pages: 189-207
DOI: 10.2143/BASP.45.0.3209360

Abstract :
This paper proposes a reinterpretation of P.Ross.Georg. 3.8, a fourth-century letter from the villagers of Euhemeria to their 'master and patron' Nechos, which has often been discussed as one of the earliest examples of an Egyptian village under the patrocinium of a wealthy landowner. I suggest instead that Nechos was the local praepositus pagi, probably in the mid- to later 340s, trying to enforce an imperial edict ordering the return of fugitive inhabitants to their home villages. The villagers’ assertion that they had never surrendered their bodies may mean no more than they had never been arrested and detained by the state. However, the growing practice of private detention and subjection for debt may have influenced their assertion. Although the restricted distribution and content and the geographical context of the papyri from the fourth-century Arsinoite nome limit their value as evidence for fourth-century developments in general, it is also doubtful that contemporary Oxyrhynchite texts provide evidence for the patronage of villages, let alone for the beginnings of the colonate.

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