The Greek Census Inscriptions of Late Antiquity

Abstract

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.