Apion family

Beginning as a local aristocracy, it rose to prominence in the 5th, 6th and early 7th centuries when several successive heads of the family occupied high imperial offices, including the consulship.

After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the family dominated the political scene in Byzantine Egypt, holding vast swathes of Middle Egyptian property through the acquisition of landed estates.

[5] He is known to have had one daughter, Isis, who may have married the man thought to be the first member of the family, Apion I,[6] who descended from another prominent line of local aristocracy, the Septimii Flaviani of neighbouring Heracleopolis Magna.

Their son, Apion II, received the ordinary consulship in the year 539 just shortly after he came of age, marking the family's political apogee.

Earlier works considered him as having been—possibly by proxy, with Apion himself remaining at Constantinople—a provincial governor in Egypt (serving as dux Thebaidos c. 548–550 and pagarch in the Arsinoite nome ca.

An honorary consul and patrikios by 604/5, Apion III died in late 619 or early January 620, a fact possibly connected with the Sassanid conquest of Egypt in the same period.

[24] In this sense, the Apiones typify the phenomenon, attested across the late Roman world, of local aristocratic families using the opportunities opened up by the expansion of the state bureaucracy in the 4th century to secure positions with the imperial civil service.

This was chiefly expressed in their acquisition of large estates, in which they were helped by the monetization of the economy and the introduction of the gold solidus as the main currency, to which they, as salaried officials, had better access than their rivals.

Instead, the Apiones, or at least the heads of the family, are shown to have been mostly absentee landlords, staying in Constantinople in close proximity to the imperial court, rather than Egypt.

[30] This belief has been modified in recent times towards an image of toleration and tacit approval by the imperial government of the great houses' local power, and cooperation between the two sides.

For instance, the great landholding families assumed the maintenance of the irrigation works, from which depended not only the provincial economy, but also Constantinople's grain supply.