The Hellenistic World: New Perspectives by Ogden Daniel

Author:Ogden, Daniel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / Aviation
Publisher: Classical Press of Wales
Published: 2010-07-13T04:00:00+00:00

Fig. 2. Household size in the third century BC (adults only).

Size of household is, however, just one way of documenting difference. Marked differences are also found in other areas – like the occupation of the household head. The larger Greek households are, not surprisingly, those of the military settlers. All Greek households made up of more than 10 taxpayers are headed by military men, by cavalry cleruchs settled with land in the Arsinoite and Oxyrhynchite nomes known from texts dated 230–229 BC. It was the cavalry cleruchs who, without a doubt, formed the elite of the rural landscape in the third century BC. These were the economic-ally privileged of Ptolemaic society, and their larger houses and households are just one more sign of this status. As we know from their further designation as 100-aroura cleruchs, at this date the immigrant cavalry settlers were also endowed with large plots of land – 100 arouras is 27.5 hectares or some 67 acres. The evidence of our salt-tax registers now allows us to recognize this wealth and status also in terms of the size of their households. And in these particular cases, the use of Greek names does on the whole appear coterminous with origin and ethnicity. These cavalry cleruchs were probably immigrant Greeks and, in the case of the Oxyrhynchite settlers of two of our texts, more specifically Greeks from Cyrene.11 Their domination in terms of both land and household size is a feature of Ptolemaic Egypt in this period, at least in this part of Egypt.

In the meantime, the Egyptian inhabitants of the country lived in far smaller households. Simple households of two adult taxpayers formed the most common unit, and many of these were of conjugal pairs. And in the smaller units of those with Egyptian names the reality of everyday life for the native population in the new society of Ptolemaic Egypt can be found reflected. How far life had changed from under the Persian overlords cannot be known. Nevertheless, it is clear that the smaller households of the Egyptian villagers form a notable measure of their lesser economic status in rural society. Their smaller plots of land belonged to the crown and, in contrast to the cleruchic land of the settlers, there were rents to pay on them. Their households were smaller; they lacked the family backup and the slaves that form a more regular feature of the larger homes of the settlers.

So far we have been considering simply the size of the different units within the population but our data allow us to go somewhat further. And if Ptolemaic Egypt is to be added to the demographic discussion of family history, then some analysis must be made of the types of families found. Was it primarily the nuclear family that is documented or perhaps the more extended and multiple families that have been seen as typical of pre-modern Mediterranean forms of domestic organization? The categorization of family types, the so-called ‘Cambridge typology’ developed by Peter Laslett and

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