1

Aegyptus
LIVIA CAPPONI

On his arrival in Alexandria on August 1,

30 BCE, Octavian addressed the crowd in the
hippodrome and demonstrated his clemency
by saying that he would spare the city because
of its beauty, its founder Alexander, and as a
mark of respect for the philosopher Areius, an
Alexandrian who had taught him in Rome.
A new city, Nikopolis (Victory City), was
founded on the site of the Roman military
camp, as a memorial to the victory in the war
against Antony and Cleopatra. Soon after the
conquest, Augustus imposed a new calendar
based on the era of the dominion of Caesar,
the son of God that is, the (adoptive) son of
the divus, Julius Caesar. Octavian also instituted a cult of himself in the Kaisareion of
Alexandria the temple built by Cleopatra
and dedicated to Julius Caesar which was
converted into a Sebasteion, from Sebastos,
Augustus in Greek.
I added Egypt to the imperium of the
Roman people, Augustus claimed in the Res
Gestae. Still, until the 1970s, scholars were
certain that Egypt was an atypical province,
set apart from the rest of the empire and
governed as a private possession of the
emperor. More recently, however, numerous
studies have shown beyond doubt that Egypt
after 30 BCE was a Roman province, governed
by Roman officials and subject to Roman
army, taxation, and law. Egypt appears peculiar
to scholars because the main source of information about it is a gigantic body of documents, preserved on papyrus, that have been
lost or destroyed in other provinces of the
empire. The fundamental characteristic of the
province was its major role as a producer of
wheat for Rome and Italy. Additionally, Egypt
was a major tax-exporting province, with its
revenues flowing into the imperial treasuries,
and, according to economic historians, stimulating trade. Egypt also played a decisive role in
long-distance trade, as its caravan routes in the

Eastern Desert and the Red Sea ports linked

Rome with the Far East as far as India.
Although Augustus radically changed the
institutions of Egypt, he often chose to retain
Ptolemaic titles and names, perhaps to avoid
giving the impression that he was imposing
new, foreign rules on a country that had traditionally greatly resented foreign masters. As was
the case with other eastern, Greek-speaking
provinces, Greek, rather than Latin, remained
the official language of bureaucracy in Egypt
throughout the Roman period. Augustus structuring of Egyptian administration and taxes
remained substantially unchanged until the
late third century CE. The Roman administration of the local communities was based on a
system of compulsory services and corvees
called liturgies in the Greek fashion in part
continuing from the Ptolemaic period, so that
the richest members had to take up the most
burdensome offices and pay for the related
expenses. This process culminated in 202 CE
with the institution of city councils (boulai)
and the placement of liturgical councilors in
every town. Compulsory services, corvee labor,
and taxation were often too heavy a burden for
the farmers, who frequently fled from their
villages in order to avoid tax officials and registrations on official tax and census lists; this
form of evasion, called anachoresis, is a phenomenon typical of Egypt, which continued
from Pharaonic times up to the Roman period.
From the Roman conquest, a Roman knight,
the prefect, took over the position and functions of the old king, while Roman officials
with equestrian status obtained the top magistracies in the province based in Alexandria.
Ptolemaic-style officials were relegated to
the local administration of the administrative
districts or nomes: the governor of the nome
was called strategos, and was assisted by
local secretaries who often knew both Greek
and Egyptian. Temple archives were replaced
in the Roman period by the grapheion, answerable to the office of the strategos. An important
novelty of the Augustan period was the yearly
conventus, an itinerant assize court in which

The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, First Edition. Edited by Roger S. Bagnall, Kai Brodersen, Craige B. Champion, Andrew Erskine,
and Sabine R. Huebner, print pages 117120.
2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah07004

2
the prefect and his entourage responded to
petitions and adjudicated cases. New archives
were created in Alexandria to speed up and
centralize the collection and storage of public
and private documents, and a new legal code
was published, the Gnomon of the Idios Logos,
some copies of which have been preserved
from the Antonine period (BGU V 1210;
P.Oxy. XLI 3014). Power was centralized in
the capitals of the nomes, and Greek
gymnasia the educational and recreational
centers of the elite often became administrative and judicial centers.
Augustus introduced rigid social and fiscal
barriers between Egyptians, Greeks, and the
Alexandrian elite. The Alexandrian citizens
and the Greeks were used as the new governing
body of the country, while the Egyptians were
excluded from the administration and even the
army, with the exception of its lowest division,
the fleet. Greeks paid reduced taxes and could
hope to achieve Alexandrian citizenship, the
prerequisite in order to eventually obtain
Roman citizenship. The number of Greeks
and Alexandrians in Egypt was strictly monitored by the Roman authorities. The most
important fiscal privilege of the Greeks was
the partial or total exemption from the provincial poll tax the laographia or registration of
people, the equivalent of the tributum capitis
(tax per head) in other provinces paid by
all adult males aged fourteen to sixty-five.
A house-to-house census assessed the liability
to this and other taxes, every fourteen years
under Tiberius, and possibly every seven years
under Augustus.
Egypt had a long history of insurrections
against Rome and imperial power. The Year
of the Four Emperors, 69 CE, drew the populations attention to the arcanum imperii
(Tac. Hist. 1.4), that is, the Roman emperor
could be elected outside Rome, when Vespasian was acclaimed as the new emperor by the
troops in Alexandria. In 116/117, Egypt was
the site of a violent revolt when the Jews rose
up against the Greeks, Egyptians, and at the
same time against the Roman government.
Under Hadrians successor Antoninus in 153,

new riots broke out in Alexandria, in which the

Prefect L. Munatius Felix was killed, and under
Marcus Aurelius in 172, there was a major
insurrection the so-called Revolt of the
Boukoloi (herdsmen) guided by the priest
Isidoros. After the important reforms of the
Severans (such as the Constitutio Antoniniana,
or Caracallas Edict, granting Roman citizenship to all adult males), in the third century
Egypt went through a financial crisis, precipitating the diffused social discontent which led
to revolts in the villages. Many emperors, from
Philip the Arabian to Aurelian and Probus,
tried to introduce fiscal reforms and to revive
agriculture through an improved system of
irrigation, but were unable to resolve the crisis.
Provoked by fiscal and social oppression, an
anti-imperial revolt broke out in Egypt around
297, and its leader Domitius Domitianus was
declared emperor and controlled the country
for almost a year, until the emperor Diocletian
personally went to Egypt to quell the revolt.
In 284, Diocletian (284305) undertook a
comprehensive reform that divided the empire
into eastern and western divisions. This is the
date generally held by scholars to mark the
end of Roman Egypt, and the beginning of
Byzantine or Christian Egypt. Diocletian
introduced a bipartite division between Egypt
and the Thebaid which lasted until about 314,
at which point Aegyptus was divided into
Aegyptus Herculia, including the East Delta
and the old Heptanomia, and Aegyptus Iovia,
which included the Central and West Delta and
Alexandria. Diocletian and his co-emperors
(30311) launched the most violent persecution of the Christians: a decree of Diocletian
in 303 ordered a systematic destruction of
churches and sacred books and a general
enslavement of Christians, so that this period
has come down to us as the Age of the
Martyrs in part because of the special role
that Alexandria played in the rise of Christianity, serving as it did as a vibrant center of
scholarship for a number of scholars, mystics,
heretics, and saints, including Origen, who
worked on commentaries of the Old and
New Testament, and St. Antony, who left

3
his home around 270 and took refuge in the
Western Desert (see DESERTS, EGYPT).
In 322, Aegyptus Herculia was split into
a province called Mercuriana, which consisted
of the territory once called Heptanomia.
However, this lasted only until Constantine
defeated Licinius in 324, when the pre-314
situation was reestablished. In 357, Egypt was
divided again into three parts, or provinces:
Augustamnica, including the East Delta and
Heptanomia, Aegyptus, including the Central
and West Delta, and the Thebaid, which went
as far north as Hermopolis and Antinoopolis.
From 381, a four-part structure was established,
which once again substantially restored the
third-century structure, with the addition of
the province of Arcadia, which took part of the
old area of Heptanomia. Each province was
under a governor called praeses, while a prefect
of Egypt, called Augustal Prefect, administered
the entire country.
SEE ALSO: Administration, Roman Egypt;
Alexandria (Egypt); Boukoloi.

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Bagnall, R. S., ed. (2007) Egypt in the Byzantine
World, 300700. Cambridge.
Bagnall, R. S. and Rathbone, D. W. (2004) Egypt
from Alexander to the early Christians: an
archaeological and historical guide.
Los Angeles.
Bowman A. K. (1986) Egypt after the Pharaohs:
332 BCAD 642: from Alexander to the Arab
Conquest. London.
Bowman, A. K. (1996) Egypt. In A. K. Bowman,
E. Champlin, and A. W. Lintott, eds., The
Cambridge ancient history, 2nd ed., vol. 10:
676702. Cambridge.
Butler, A. J. (1978 [1902]) The Arab Conquest of
Egypt and the last thirty years of the Roman
dominion, 2nd ed., rev. by P. M. Fraser.
Oxford.
Capponi, L. (2010) Roman Egypt. In
A. Lloyd, ed., A companion to ancient Egypt.
London.
Capponi, L. (2010) Roman Egypt. London.
Gascou, J. (2008) Fiscalite et societe en Egypte
byzantine. Paris.