Propriétaires et citoyens dans l’Orient romain

This collection brings together a series of papers combining institutional and economic history of the Roman East, from the end of the Hellenistic period to Late Antiquity and beyond. By studying the relationship between landownership and the workings of cities, using different kinds of evidence, mainly epigraphical and papyrological documents, they focus on changes in those fields and on the links, often overlooked, they intertwined during the Roman period. The economic, fiscal and legal regime of the Roman Empire had a local impact on the relationship between cities and landowners located on their territories. From these essays emerges a crucial idea: from the point of view of the imperial rule itself, inequality of land distribution between landowners on civic territories was necessary to civic life so that elite members might take charge of the expenditure of magistracies and liturgies. In the meantime, it gradually altered the social and political equilibrium of the cities and significantly contributed to their historical evolution.