Apion (family)
The Apionen ( Flavii Apiones ) were an important and wealthy family who has been resident in Egypt until the early 7th century in the late Roman period 5. Legal extensive papyrus finds from the so-called Apionenarchiv prove exceptionally well their history. Several members of the family held high positions in the Eastern Roman administration or in the military and presized sometimes even ecclesiastical disputes.
History
The Apionen were Christians and were first in the imperial provincial service, but increased in the 5th century to rich landowners. They had, especially in the area of Oxyrhynchus large estates and had enormous influence that they secured through skillful intermarriage into the local aristocracy. Flavius Apion II rose in the middle of the 6th century up to the consulship, and also held other senior posts, including the Captains Office ( 556 ).
Your large estates were apparently more or less semi- autonomous, since both prisons and the presence of private household troops (see Bucellarius ) are attested, which recruited the Apionen themselves and chatted. Both usually tried to suppress the Eastern Roman government. The large apionischen farms, estimates of about 75,000 acres of land that has been cultivated mainly of coloni adscripticii (if there were free tenants ), who stood in a dependent relationship with the landowners. The possession of Apionen not limited to the region around Oxyrhynchus, but would also land at Herakleopolites, Arsinoites and Kynopolites why the family for organizational reasons built up a private administrative apparatus, which included a post office and a transport system. The possession was by no means uniform: So vineyards, pastures and arable land are also mentioned, such as real estate.
These structures therefore referred to the modern research, the late Roman Egypt, this time as a quasi- feudal. To what extent this occasionally led to conflict with the Eastern Roman government, is controversial, but certainly put the Apionen so sure that their influence (albeit regionally limited) was applied. On the other hand, just seems in the time of Justinian a co-operation to be performed when already Flavius Apion I. was sponsored by Justin I, and even temporarily served as praetorian prefect of the East. It is even possible that they have support about the elevation of Heraclius against the largely unpopular Emperor Phocas at the beginning of the 7th century.
A relative of Flavius Apion III. from a secondary line of Apionen, the so-called pseudo - Strategius III. , arbitrating at the synod in Alexandria 616 a dispute between the miaphysitischen Church of Egypt and Syria. The traces of the family lost with the onset of shortly after beginning the Persian invasion of Egypt.