AURELIUS PHOIBAMMON
151
nomen;23 he seems more to parallel his older contemporary,
Aurelius Apollos, father of the well-known notary and poetaster,
Flavius Dioscorus, and a man prominent locally or regionally but
not (except fleetingly in an excursion to Constantinople) in any
larger arena.24
Phoibammon during his long lifetime (he was acting on his
own by 526, still going strong in 572)25 proved himself a man of
great energy, industry and acquisitiveness. These drives are already
evident in the Samuel-Phoibammon papers, our impression of
their intensity reinforced by later or undated papyrus-documents.
From the Samuel-Phoibammon papyri and the twelve additional texts, however thinly spread over the course of nearly half a
century, it appears that one of Samuel's practices was to take land
(from tiny 2-aroura parcels to 28-aroura farms to plots of indeterminate area) under lease. His known lessors (I count nine) are an
interesting collection because they may be seen to fall into distinct
categories. The constituents of all three categories would appear to
hold this one trait in common: they cannot (or will not) see
personally to farming the land they own. Leading the list, with
five, are ecclesiatical and monastic institutions that owned land in
the Aphrodite arable or in that of the adjacent village of Phthla:
1. The Holy Monastery named after Psentuses, whose
holdings were managed by the Monastery of Apa
Sourous.
2. The Church of the Antaiopolite metropolis.
3. The Holy Hostel of the Topos of Apa Dius.
4. The Monastery of Apa Senouthes (Schenute).
5. The church whose name appears as damaged in
P.Michael. 49.26
23 Oxyrhynchite great landowners: E. R. Hardy, The Large Estates of Byzantine
Egypt (New York 1931), esp. chapts. II-III. Flavian nomen: Keenan, ZPE 11 (1973)
33-63; 13 (1974) 283-304, esp. 13, pp. 283 ft.
24 One must also, however, take into account the monastery Apollos founded
toward the end of his life: H. I. Bell, JHS 64 (1944) 26; D. H. Samuel, BASP 4
(1967) 37-42; P.Cair.Masp. 1 67096. Constantinople: P.Cair.Masp. I1 67126.
25 P.Michael. 43 (526), 48 (572).
26 1. P.Mich. XIII 667. 2. P.Flor. 111 289. 3. PSI IV 284. 4. P.Ross-Georg. I11 48.
5. P.Michael. 49-all assigned to the sixth century, no specific dates recoverable or
given. P.Michael. 49 has not so much been misread as misinterpreted. In lines 1-2
something like KaOoLkt/KL iKKKAhorrl[a4 is needed. Pestman is right (BL V, p. 68)
in resolving the abbreviations in lines 2-3 as: 8taK(6vov)/KaL oiK(ovO6j.ov). The
important point here is that the deacon and steward is an agent of the church, not
0
