Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T12:44:13.208Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Greek Census Inscriptions of Late Antiquity*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2010

Kyle Harper
Kyle Harper
Affiliation:
University of Oklahomakyleharper@ou.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This article reconsiders a set of Late Roman inscriptions which record the tax liabilities of dozens of landowners in terms of post-Diocletianic fiscality. The stones, from eleven cities in the Aegean and western Asia Minor, are evaluated as evidence for the social and economic history of the Late Empire, challenging Jones' fundamental study in which the inscriptions are read as a sign of structural crisis. With their non-Egyptian provenance, the inscriptions offer unique, quantitative insights into land-ownership and labour. The inscriptions reveal surprising levels of slave labour in the eastern provinces, particularly in a new inscription from Thera. This last document allows, for the first time, an empirical analysis of the demographics of an estate-based population of slaves in antiquity.

Keywords

LATE ROMAN EMPIRESLAVERYDEMOGRAPHYEPIGRAPHYTHERALAND-OWNERSHIPLABOURCOLONATE
Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 98 , November 2008 , pp. 83 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © Kyle Harper 2008. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

* I would like to express my gratitude to those who have commented on this paper at various phases, especially Richard Duncan-Jones and Scott Johnson. I also wish to thank the Editor, the anonymous referees for JRS, and Chris Wickham, whose responses have greatly improved the article. Above all I am indebted to Christopher Jones, Michael McCormick, and Brent Shaw, who have patiently helped me develop this paper from the time it was a chapter in my dissertation on Late Roman slavery.