Description

Examines the social and economic context of the reign of the Emperor Justinian (527–65). Examines the social and economic context of the reign of the Emperor Justinian (527–65) and argues that, instead of the omnipotent autocrat of much imperial propaganda, there emerges an Emperor desperately trying to reinforce the fiscal basis of the state in the face of large-scale aristocratic tax-evasion and resistance. Examines the social and economic context of the reign of the Emperor Justinian (527–65) and argues that, instead of the omnipotent autocrat of much imperial propaganda, there emerges an Emperor desperately trying to reinforce the fiscal basis of the state in the face of large-scale aristocratic tax-evasion and resistance. The reign of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian (527–65) stands out in late Roman and medieval history. Justinian re-conquered far-flung territories from the barbarians, overhauled the Empire's administrative framework and codified for posterity the inherited tradition of Roman law. This work represents a modern study in English of the social and economic history of the Eastern Roman Empire in the reign of the Emperor Justinian. Drawing upon papyrological, numismatic, legal, literary and archaeological evidence, the study seeks to reconstruct the emergent nature of relations between landowners and peasants, and aristocrats and emperors in the late antique Eastern Empire. It provides a social and economic context in which to situate the Emperor Justinian's mid-sixth-century reform programme, and questions the implications of the Eastern Empire's pattern of social and economic development under Justinian for its subsequent, post-Justinianic history. Introduction; 1. Egypt and the political economy of empire; 2. The Apion archive: economic structure and estate accounts; 3. Labour and administration: the evidence of the contractual papyri; 4. Letters and petitions: social relations in the sixth-century Oxyrhynchite; 5. The Apiones and their analogues; 6. On the margins of magnate power: Dioscorus and Aphrodito; 7. Landscapes of power: the great estate beyond Egypt; 8. The historiography of the great estate; 9. The great estate and the imperial authorities; 10. The rise of the great estate; 11. Economy and society in the age of Justinian; Bibliography. 'This excellent book is the first - and much needed - English discussion devoted solely to the economic and social history of the Roman Empire in the reign of Justinian … This important book deserves a wide audience. Scholars of late antiquity will find it essential reading, as will economic historians of the Mediterranean region, especially medievalists who have an interest in the development of economic structures and their social consequences at the end of antiquity.' The American Historical Review