Peter Sarris is Lecturer in Medieval History and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and All Souls College, Oxford.

'This excellent book is the first - and much needed - English discussion devoted solely to the economic and social history of the Roman Empire in the reign of Justinian … This important book deserves a wide audience. Scholars of late antiquity will find it essential reading, as will economic historians of the Mediterranean region, especially medievalists who have an interest in the development of economic structures and their social consequences at the end of antiquity.' The American Historical Review

• Introduction; 1. Egypt and the political economy of empire; 2. The Apion archive: economic structure and estate accounts; 3. Labour and administration: the evidence of the contractual papyri; 4. Letters and petitions: social relations in the sixth-century Oxyrhynchite; 5. The Apiones and their analogues; 6. On the margins of magnate power: Dioscorus and Aphrodito; 7. Landscapes of power: the great estate beyond Egypt; 8. The historiography of the great estate; 9. The great estate and the imperial authorities; 10. The rise of the great estate; 11. Economy and society in the age of Justinian; Bibliography.

Peter Sarris is Lecturer in Medieval History and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and All Souls College, Oxford.

'This excellent book is the first - and much needed - English discussion devoted solely to the economic and social history of the Roman Empire in the reign of Justinian … This important book deserves a wide audience. Scholars of late antiquity will find it essential reading, as will economic historians of the Mediterranean region, especially medievalists who have an interest in the development of economic structures and their social consequences at the end of antiquity.' The American Historical Review

• Introduction; 1. Egypt and the political economy of empire; 2. The Apion archive: economic structure and estate accounts; 3. Labour and administration: the evidence of the contractual papyri; 4. Letters and petitions: social relations in the sixth-century Oxyrhynchite; 5. The Apiones and their analogues; 6. On the margins of magnate power: Dioscorus and Aphrodito; 7. Landscapes of power: the great estate beyond Egypt; 8. The historiography of the great estate; 9. The great estate and the imperial authorities; 10. The rise of the great estate; 11. Economy and society in the age of Justinian; Bibliography.

Peter Sarris is Lecturer in Medieval History and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and All Souls College, Oxford.

'This excellent book is the first - and much needed - English discussion devoted solely to the economic and social history of the Roman Empire in the reign of Justinian … This important book deserves a wide audience. Scholars of late antiquity will find it essential reading, as will economic historians of the Mediterranean region, especially medievalists who have an interest in the development of economic structures and their social consequences at the end of antiquity.' The American Historical Review

• Introduction; 1. Egypt and the political economy of empire; 2. The Apion archive: economic structure and estate accounts; 3. Labour and administration: the evidence of the contractual papyri; 4. Letters and petitions: social relations in the sixth-century Oxyrhynchite; 5. The Apiones and their analogues; 6. On the margins of magnate power: Dioscorus and Aphrodito; 7. Landscapes of power: the great estate beyond Egypt; 8. The historiography of the great estate; 9. The great estate and the imperial authorities; 10. The rise of the great estate; 11. Economy and society in the age of Justinian; Bibliography.