BMCR 2009.07.25: Whately on Ruffini, Social Networks in Byzantine Egypt

Giovanni Ruffini, Social Networks in Byzantine Egypt.  Cambridge/New
York:  Cambridge University Press, 2008.  Pp. x, 278.  ISBN
9780521895378.  $110.00.

Reviewed by Conor Whately, University of Warwick
([email protected])
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[Table of contents at the end of the review.]

There has been some significant work done on the economy and society of
Byzantine Egypt in the last decade.[[1]]  Although most of those
studies have concentrated on the economy of Byzantine Egypt, as well as
its relationship with, and impact on, the region's various social
groups, Ruffini's new book, Social Networks in Byzantine Egypt  focuses
squarely on Egypt's social structures, though for some aspects, like
the Great Estate, the two are necessarily intertwined.  Ruffini's
monograph, a prosopographical overview of Oxyrhynchos and Aphrodito, as
well as a network analysis--employing social network theory and the
computer programs UCINET and Pajek--of those two locations, is an
important contribution to the study of Byzantine Egypt in the
periodfrom the second half of the fifth century through the Arab
conquest.  Indeed, one of the most significant features of Ruffini's
study is his novel utilization of social network analysis, a
theoretical, quantitative tool, which allows us to "measure the extent
of a society's centralization, to identify topographical patterns in
the formation of its large estates, and to identify the most
central...figures in its social networks" (p. 3).  This book marks one
of the first applications of this method to the ancient world, and
despite some drawbacks, its largely successful usage by Ruffini raises
questions about its relevance to other significant bodies of evidence
from the ancient world, such as Greek and Latin civic inscriptions, the
Nessana papyri, and, potentially, the PLRE.  As such, Ruffini deserves
an audience beyond the papyrologists and students of the economy and
society of the sixth and seventh centuries who make up this book's
primary readership.

In the introduction, Ruffini provides a tutorial on network analysis
specifically aimed at ancient historians, much like this reviewer, who
are unfamiliar with this method.  This includes its history, a look at
its limited use by students of the ancient world, and an overview of
the terminology and practice of network analysis.[[2]]  A key component
of this introduction is his discussion of how to make and use a
data-set.  Its creation is the first step in network analysis, and
despite the fact that we (that is, students of the ancient world) lack
individuals to interview, in contrast to an anthropologist who would
undertake such an analysis, our evidence can still enable us to analyse
the social connections from (1) person to person, (2) person to place,
(3) place to place, and (4) person or place to event (p. 21).  The
first and third items are one-node networks where evidence of one type
is linked, while the second and fourth items are two-node network,
where evidence of two types is linked.  It is the former Ruffini is
concerned with, and besides telling us how to convert from one to
two-node networks, he identifies his data sets, namely, the (1981)
Pruneti topographical register for the Oxyrhynchos, and the (1938)
Girgis Prosopography for Aphrodito.[[3]]  After this, Ruffini provides
a discussion of the key terminology (pp. 28-40).

The first chapter of the book, entitled "The Centralized Elite of
Oxyrhynchos," is a sometimes dry prosopographical analysis of the
Oxyrhynchite nome.  Ruffini discusses a host of landowners in this
chapter, including Kyria, Alexander, Phib Anastasia, and Apion (pp.
44-53), and their relationships within the Oxyrhynchos.  We also find
discussions of the estates of Theon and Timagenes (pp. 53-61); Fl.
Apion Theodosios Ioannes, Samuel, and Phoibammon (pp. 61-64); Flavius
Eulogios (pp. 64-70); Fl. Euphemia and Fl. Anastasia (pp. 70-75);
Christodote, and Kometes (pp. 75-80); and the Oxyrhynchite church (pp.
80-91): a dizzying array of elites and properties.  It is in this
chapter that Ruffini delves into the contentious issue of the "Great
Estates", and sides with Gascou, the "fiscal shares" position, and the
concomitant belief that these large estates were the exception rather
than the rule.[[4]]  On the other hand, Ruffini also characterizes
these estates as the central hubs of the nome's social networks.  This
seeming incongruity begs the question, if the estates were exceptional,
how valuable would an analysis of their networks be if we wanted to use
the results to discuss Egypt at large, let alone the Eastern Empire as
a whole?  Of course, the evidence afforded by the Oxyrhynchos is so
substantial that to ignore it would be a mistake.  Ruffini makes a
number of useful observations over the course of this chapter,
including the fact that the urban elites seem to have been quite
distanced from their rural holdings, and that many of their social
connections were both indirect and vertical.  He concludes that the
nome was economically centralized, with the rural periphery bound to
the urban centre through hierarchical ties.

The second chapter, "The Growth of the Apions," applies network
analysis to the Oxyrhynchite topography, marking the first test in this
book of this novel approach.  In the absence of a detailed
prosopography for Oxyrhynchos, Ruffini decides to "use the
topographical evidence in Paola Pruneti's register of the Oxyrhynchite
nome as a substitute for the social connectivity of the nome as a
whole" (p. 95).  There is a concise overview of the Flavii Apiones (pp.
96-99), followed by some, perhaps, foolhardy,[[5]] though also
thought-provoking, discussion of the Apionic population, which delves
into the aforementioned issue of fiscal shares (pp. 99-119).  Although
Ruffini sticks to the Gascou line (supported by Hickey among others,
and to my mind ably challenged recently by Sarris 2006) regarding
fiscal shares, he rightly qualifies this by noting that whether the
Apiones owned the land in question in his analysis or simply had fiscal
responsibility for it would not alter his model (p. 99, n. 28).
Ruffini concludes that the population under Apionic control was
probably around 10,096, noting that this was possibly only a fraction
of the total (p. 118).

Next, he turns to one of the chief aims of this chapter, namely his
attempt to map the growth of the Apionic estate, a noble task which,
hitherto, no scholar has successfully carried out.  He begins by
looking at the traditional means of answering such a question (pp.
119-127).  Ruffini then turns to his network analysis approach, and the
results are striking (pp. 127-142).  The evidence suggests that the
Apionic holdings were scattered throughout the nome, that they came
under their fiscal responsibility seemingly at random, that the
family's influence was fairly evenly distributed throughout the nome,
that there is no geographic sequence to their growth, and that their
presence in the region predates the existing (sixth century)
bureaucratic structures.  Ruffini notes that the evidence seems to
confirm the conclusions reached from the previous chapter concerning
the nome's centralization.  What is more, he also suggests that the
growth of the Apionic estate may have changed the region's social
geography, while noting that the rate of change seems to have
accelerated in the years following the outbreak of the plague in the
540s.

Chapter three, "Aphrodito and the Strong Ties of Village Society,"
focuses on the village of Aphrodito, the social landscape of which is
characterized by strong, horizontal, multiplex ties, that is ties in
which a person may be connected to someone by more than one means, such
as family.  Ruffini notes the village's continuing efforts to promote
its right to autopragia, which Zuckerman (2004) argued disappeared in
the 550s.  While describing the relationships of the village's elite,
including Apollos, Dioskoros, and Phoibammon, the son of Triadelphos
(pp. 152-163), he makes the plausible suggestion that land acquisition
in the village proceeded along social and familial lines (p. 163, 168).
In a similar manner, Ruffini claims that the famous petition to
Theodora (P.Cair.Masp. 3.67283) shows, due to social networks, a barely
discernable distinction between village, community, family, and friends
(p. 179).  He then turns, briefly, to the murder mystery (P. Mich.
13.660, P. Mich. 13.661), which has received some attention from
scholars, and to Aphrodito's relationship to its neighbouring villages
(pp. 184-187), as well as to the village and its pagarchs, those
officials responsible for the collection of taxes.  Ruffini notes that
the Flavii, the 'region's political elite,' were in regular contact
with Aphrodito society, so laying the basis for his--to my mind
unsuccessful--challenge to Banaji's (2001) model of an imperial
aristocracy composed by outsiders.  This is largely framed around a
discussion of the career of Flavius Menas, a man with strong multiplex
ties to the village, yet opposed to Aphrodito's leading men as a result
of his opposition to securing its right of autopragia.  At the end he
discusses Zuckerman's supposition that Flavius Ioulianos was the
dominant land owner in the village, which Ruffini had referred to at
the start of the chapter, and despite his concerns, he fails to discard
it, although he concedes that the evidence concerning Ioulianos is
insufficient (p. 197, cf. p. 241).

In the last chapter, "Qualifying Aphrodito's Social Network", Ruffini
returns to network analysis, and at the end of the opening paragraph he
makes the following provocative statements (p. 198):  "Aphrodito's
social network had a very low degree of hierarchy and was relatively
decentralized," which, "coming from a century we picture as having
rather rigid social hierarchies...opens the door to reconsidering the
realities of village life throughout late antiquity."  Much discussion
of late antique social structures has focused on ecclesiastical,
imperial, and urban elites;with the obvious exception of Aphrodito,
village life has been ignored. However, studies of rural life exist,
for the countryside in Syria and Palestine have attracted some
attention.  Thus his rather bold statements are a bit presumptuous.
Ruffini discusses his data set much as he did in chapter two, and while
doing so he argues that he ought not to combine post-Girgis material
with the Girgis material (p. 201, 211).  Yet, if one of the aims of
chapters three and four is to get at the social connections of the
village as whole, and new evidence has been brought to light since the
publication of Girgis in 1938, then I think we ought to include this
material on the chance that it might uncover not only previously
unknown individuals, but possibly hidden connections.[[6]] On the other
hand, omitting texts that boast a disproportionate number of names,
such as P. Flor. 3.297, and P. Cair. Masp. 3.67288 which list 466 and
28 villagers respectively, is sensible.  Objections aside, Ruffini's
analysis does produce some interesting results, namely that the keys to
social connectivity in the village are the owning of land, the ability
to write, and the forming of relationships with shepherds (p. 217).
The last of the three is the most surprising, though Ruffini notes that
the shepherds were important in large part because of their mobility
and concomitant connections with Aphrodito's satellite villages, as
well as for the security that they offered (p. 226).  Ruffini is also
interested in the changes in connectivity over time, and here the
discussion is less convincing, partially due to the numbers employed
(pp. 232-240).  His results suggest little change in connectivity over
the course of the sixth century.  Interestingly, and tellingly, he also
finds that Aphrodito's social network is stronger than is statistically
likely, which does raise some questions about the applicability of the
results.  Still, one would be surprised if the villagers were not
closely connected socially and his arguments in this regard are surely
correct.

In the conclusion Ruffini points out the divergent picture that his
prosopographical and network analyses of the Oxyrhynchos and Aphrodito
have produced.  Where Aphrodito is characterized by face-to-face
multiplexity, Oxyrhynchos is characterized by vertical centralizing
ties.  This begs the question, as Ruffini notes, of whether we should
accept these regional differences and search for other such evidence,
or ask what is missing from our evidence to make the social structures
from the two sites more similar, in keeping with the recent studies of
Zuckerman (2004) and Sarris (2006).  Ruffini casts asides these two
possibilities and instead adopts a middle course of action regarding
future work, what he calls the universalizing thesis, one I find
attractive:  "I rather suspect [Byzantine Egypt] looked quite a bit
like Aphrodito in [sic] Oxyrhynchos, in which village networks formed
from strong horizontal ties connected to nome-wide networks through
centralizing vertical ties" (p. 249).

Much is often made about the application of modern theory to the
ancient evidence, and one can be assured that some will find fault with
Ruffini's usage of modern network analysis.  Indeed, some of the
results are unsurprising, such as his conclusions about the close
face-to-face ties of Aphrodito, a seemingly timeless characteristic of
village life as any long-time resident of a small town (whether in
southern Ontario, such as myself, or Byzantine Egypt) could attest.
Perhaps what is surprising is the fact that this position has not been
adopted more widely before.  The same might be said for his
observations on the centralized character of social relations in the
Oxyrhynchos, given the generally hierarchical character of late
antiquity, and the Roman world generally, as this too is unsurprising.
Other conclusions, however, such as what Ruffini's analysis has to tell
us about the growth of the Apionic holdings, and the role of important
individuals and groups (shepherds for example) in Aphrodito, are new.
As such, his use of social network analysis has, to my mind, proven its
worth, and those with an aversion to numbers and figures should not be
put off.  Although I am a sceptic of the applicability of the Egyptian
papyrological evidence to the whole of the Mediterranean, this analysis
has ably dispensed with many of my reservations (p. 252).  Ruffini has
made an important and provocative addition to modern scholarship on the
social history of late antiquity.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
1.  The Centralized Elite of Oxyrhynchos
2.  The Growth of the Apions
3.  Aphrodito and the Strong Ties of Village Society
4.  Quantifying Aphrodito's Social Network
Conclusion
------------------
Notes:


1.    Some of these works include Banaji's (2001, Oxford) Agrarian
Change in Late Antiquity:  Gold, Labour, and Aristocratic Dominance,
Mitthof's (2001, Florence) Annona Militaris:  die Heeresversorgung im
spaetantiken Aegypten; Zuckerman's (2004, Paris) Du Village A\
L'Empire:  Autour du registre fiscal d'Aphrodito^, Sarris' (2006,
Cambridge) Economy and Society in the Age of Justinian, and Bagnall's
(2007, Cambridge) edited volume Egypt in the Byzantine World, 300-700,
not to mention Hickey's (2001) unpublished University of Chicago
dissertation, A Public 'House' But Closed:  Fiscal Participation and
Economic Decision Making on the Oxyrhynchite Estate of the Flavii
Apiones, and Wickham's (2005, Oxford) Framing the Early Middle Ages,
notably absent from Ruffini's bibliography, which includes considerable
discussion of late antique Egypt.

2.   The common phrase "six degrees of separation" has its origins in
social network analysis.

3.   Pruneti, P. (1981, Florence) I centri abitati dell'Ossirinchite:
repertorio toponomastico; Girgis, V. A. (1938, Berlin) Prosopografia e
Aphroditopolis.

4.   Gascu, J. (1985), "Les Grands Domaines, la cite/ et l'e/tat en
E/gypte byzantine (Recherches d'histoire agraire, fiscale et
administrative)," T&M 9:  1-90.  Sarris (2006), and to a lesser degree
Zuckerman (2004), have challenged this view, arguing that the Great
Estates were a fixture of the Eastern Mediterranean.

5.   Ancient populations are notoriously difficult, if not impossible,
to ascertain.  See the discussion of Scheidel (2007:  38ff, Cambridge)
in the recent Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World.

6.   Granted, although it would be a considerable undertaking--which
thankfully Ruffini says he is currently undertaking for another
project, namely an Aphrodito prosopography--it is surely necessary if
the results achieved are going to have any lasting value.