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ECONOMY AND SOCIETY IN THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN. BY PETER SARRIS. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2006. Pp. xi, 258, 7 figs.
THIS BOOK PLACES CLASS STRUGGLE and a conception of history propelled by class interests dynamically back on the agenda for the study of the later empire. While focusing on the great estates of sixth-century Egypt, its overarching argument reaches from Diocletian to the Arab conquests, tracing the origin and rise of the great estates and implicating them in a new narrative of imperial politics and, ultimately, failure. No apology is offered for this approach to a field diat has been preoccupied with questions of religion and culture. Religion is here moved to the back seat: "empty pockets made for bad Christians" is the last sentence (234; cf. 221), and hagiographie evidence for economic life is dispatched as unreliable (it too was shaped by elite class sensitivities: 118-121).
The core of the book offers a close reading of the papyrological evidence for the Oxyrhynchus estates of the Apion family in the mid- to late-sixdi century, under the categories of estate accounts (Chapter Two), contracts (Chapter Three), the administrative structure of the household business (Chapter Four), and fiscal documents (Chapter Five). This is the one estate whose inner workings "on the ground" (9) we know about, and it stands in for others in the larger narrative developed later. It is only after he has offered his reading of the evidence that Sarris surveys past views of the estates (Chapter Eight). He persuasively refutes the view of J. Gascou that they were essentially extensions of the imperial fisc, presenting them instead as private businesses geared toward profit; in fact, under Justinian they were to conflict with imperial authority, from whose standpoint they appeared as "highly powerful and deeply insidious vested interests" (2). The book's cover is well chosen from among the mosaics of the Justinianic palace: an eagle ("representing the imperial office") striking a snake ("its rivals").
Pursuant to J. Banaji's studies of elite economic behavior and resources,1 Sarris likewise emphasizes the "highly sophisticated...