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JAMES G. KEENAN
specified by any of the usual Byzantine formulas.'5 It might be
presumed that he lived where his military unit was stationed-the
Ptolemaid Nome. Whatever or wherever that was, it seems not to
have been identical with or adjacent to the Antaiopolite Nome (in
which the village Aphrodite was located). Thus Samuel may have
been an absentee landowner, though on a modest scale, and his
farm, more than adequate in size for the sustenance of an
Egyptian peasant family, may have proved unprofitable for an
owner who had to lease it out for another man to farm.16 For it is
clear that Samuel did not farm the land himself: even before the
lease to Phoibammon the farm had been leased to one John, son
of Phrer.17
To proceed to Phoibammon: if Samuel is known only from the
three papyri that have been our concern till now, Phoibammon is
known from some dozen additional texts which serve to amplify
and elucidate the happenings and circumstances in the SamuelPhoibammon papyri.18 If Phoibammon, in A.D. 526 and 527, is not
to be judged "a rich landowner," he was certainly at that time a
leading villager of Aphrodite. He was perhaps then, and assuredly
later on, a member of the village board of o-vVTEXEo-rac,19 and
sometimes accorded the epithet "most marvellous"
(Oavjuacoubraroo).20 He is in a text of uncertain date styled as a
KTr77 op (possessor),21 but whether he was a magnus possessor or
rather a parvus possessor (as some of his co-villagers styled
themselves)22 is uncertain. He does not at any rate fit the mold of
the Oxyrhynchite magni possessores, male and female, who held
imperial offices and dignities and (correspondingly) the Flavian
15 H. Braunert, Die Binnenwanderung (Bonn 1964) 293-336, passim. I shall
extend somewhat on Braunert's discussion on terminology in an eventually forthcoming chapter in ANR W.
16 More than adequate for an Egyptian peasant family: cf. Crawford and Welles
(above, n. 7), locc. citt.
17 P.Michael. 43.14: 'Ioavvov 4prqplo[v] rov ^I4ov TrpoyEWpyov.
18 References collected in the intro. to P.Mich. XIII 667.
19 Restored in P.Michael. 43; but see PSI IV 283 (550), P.Michael. 46 (559), 47
(570), 48 (572). The crvvrEXEcral (contributarii) were leading villagers, jointly
responsible for the collection and payment of taxes, theoretically paid by such
autopract villages as Aphrodite direct to the provincial treasury without the mediation or interference of the territory's pagarch.
20 P.Michael. 46, 47, 48, 50.
21 P.Mich. XIII 667.
22 "Wretched smallholders" (&aOkuv KATrroK7rlrpwv)- P.Cair.Masp. I 67002.2,
cf. 67002 III 4.
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