AURELIUS PHOIBAMMON
153
to have paid his rent in full (exact amounts not given) on plots of
land whose areas are left undefined.30
As a result, any detailed discussion of Phoibammon's chronological progress and success as a leaseholder, any discussion of the
total area of his leaseholdings in any given year, whether he
farmed them all himself or not, of his profit margins, and so forth,
is ruled out. It can only be said that he frequently took land in
lease and speculated that he found the endeavor worthwhile. A
small, but possibly significant inkling of his success may be seen in
one of the rent receipts31 where it is indicated, albeit for a very
small plot of land, that Phoibammon had paid his rent in advance
of the harvest (!). This suggests that he was a man who had
gathered extra produce into his storehouse and could pay some of
his rents out of a stock already in existence, and points to why, on
a larger scale and in virtually capitalistic fashion,32 he was able, all
at once, to lease a farm from Flavius Samuel and to lend him
substantial quantities of produce-and to lend him more and more
as time wore on.
The other side of Phoibammon's land activities concerns his
land acquisition and ownership. For these activities, the chronology
is more precise since the evidence consists almost entirely of dated
land leases (with Phoibammon as lessor) and sales (with Phoibammon as purchaser). These do not give a total figure for Phoibammon's landownings at any given time. What they do indicate
(separatim) is that at one time or another (apart from his possible
acquisition of Samuel's farm) Phoibammon owned the following:
1. Two-thirds of an estate of indeterminate extent and
obscured location, purchased in or before 536.
2. Pasturages purchased from two Aphrodite shepherds
in 540 (earlier land purchases and mortgages held by
Phoibammon are acknowledged as still valid).
3. In 559, a farm of indeterminate extent in Aphrodite's
eastern plain, co-owned with Victor, the son of
Kollouthos.
30 P.Flor. III 289, PSI IV 284, P.Mich. XIII 668, P.Michael. 49, P.Ross-Georg. III
48.
31 P.Mich. XIII 668.
32 In the general sense of the term, as proposed and discussed by F. Braudel,
Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism (Baltimore-London 1977). Phoibammon did not hoard all his cash and produce, but used them to acquire more, or
to acquire land. See discussion immediately following.
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