Download PDF | Chronological Systems Of Byzantine Egypt, Brill (2004)
353 Pages
PREFACE
Byzantine papyri: in the case of Bagnall, the Columbia papyri from fourth-century Karanis; in the ‘ease of Worp, papyri from Hermopolis in the Vienna collection. We came to the problems of the indiction cycle from somewhat different types of material, but we both came quickly to the ‘conclusion that the accepted truths about indictions were inadequate. In the first edition of this book, completed in 1977 and published in 1978 as Studia Amstelodamensia 8, we investigated on the basis of the documents the manner in which the indiction system came to take form, its ways ‘of operation, and its relationship tothe fiscal system of Later Roman Egypt.
‘We noted then our awareness that more work remained to be done on this subject, but it must be confessed that we did not really know how much there was or how much it would occupy us for a number of years. We found it necessary to follow CSBE up very soon with a collection of regnal formulas (RFBE), a later set of addenda and corrigenda to CSBE and RFBE, ‘and other pieces dealing not merely with chronological indications narrowly speaking but with the formal carapace of late antique documents followed.
I we now take the occasion of the silver anniversary of the first edition to replace it with a ‘new and greatly enlarged one, it is not because the subject seems to us exhausted, still less because it has suddenly become fashionable. (The article of Anthony Grafton from which our ‘epigraph comes does, however, make an eloquent plea for the importance of chronology as an historical discipline.) Although one of the conditions we looked forward to in 1978 has been fulfiled-the availability of digital versions of the texts of all of the documentary papyri-it remains the case even after much critical work by many hands that many of the relevant texts, ‘specially those of the sixth to eighth century, need reexamination if not reedition. We expect from this continuing labor and from the ongoing editing of Byzantine papyri to see many more harvests of relevant material and, in all likelihood, some significant discoveries.
The work on the indictions, which was the starting point of this book, brought us already a ‘quarter-century ago to the conclusion that for other means of dating the student of Byzantine apyri was also ill-served by existing works. For this reason we included brief studies of the various eras in use and of the scribal habits observable in connection with the use of postconsulates. A synoptic chronological chart (Appendix C) was provided in order to facilitate comparison of different chronological indices, and we appended a list of occurrences of Consulates in Byzantine papyri (Appendix D) along with an index of consular names and epithets (Appendix E).
In this new edition we have incorporated our subsequent work, revised and ‘updated, in further chapters. The Era of Diocletian has been extended to include the Era of the Martyrs; regnal titulature has been added (Chapter 6 and Appendix F), along with oath formulas that are in many cases parallel (Appendix G). The invocations that from 591 on precede the chronological indications at the start of legal documents are described in Chapter 10 and Saracene” years (the era of the Hijra) allowing the user to relate this era to the other major chronological systems in use in the first century of Arab rule in Egypt, and a table of datings by the moon in Greek texts from Nubia.
Finally, we have provided a brief appendix on weekdays in papyrological and epigraphical ‘sources from Egypt and Nubia (Appendix K).
Especially Appendixes I and J show how far we have recklessly breached the limits of the first edition, in which we resolutely excluded non-Egyptian evidence and everything written in languages other than Greek and Latin. That does not mean that we have entirely abandoned our ‘worries about our lack of adequate competence in Arabic and Old Nubian, not to speak of the limits of our Coptic; nor does it indicate any confidence that the systems of reckoning that survived the seventh century, the indiction and the Era of Diocletian/Martyrs, operated in exactly the same way after the Arab conquest as before. But it does point toa sense that it is important to collect the evidence to allow for the degree of continuity in practice to be assessed.
We should ‘note that we are indebted to many colleagues for help in this widening of the evidentiary basis of the book, most importantly to Lestie MacCoul!’s collaboration with Worp in the articles in which ‘meh of the additional material now given in Chapter 8 was first assembled, We are also very ‘much aware of how much the new edition has benefited from tools that did not exist in 1977, ‘most notably the Duke Data Bank of Documentary Papyri and the Heidelberger Gesi vverzeichnis der Griechischen Papyrusurkunden, but also the electronic version of the Bibl graphic Papyrologique. ‘We noted in the first edition thatthe preparation of this book involved a very large amount of critical work with editions of Byzantine texts, in the course of which we had frequent recourse to the assistance of colleagues in various parts of the world, who provided photographs, tracings, drawings, and their own readings on originals or photographs.
Among these were R. A. Coles, Chr. Desroches-Noblecourt, M. H. Eliassen, M. Fackelmann, I. F. Fikhman, H.-G. Gundel, A. E. Hanson, H. Harrauer, R. Jiger, H. Maehler, R. Pintaudi, G. Poethke, J. R. Rea, J. Schwartz and C. Wehtli, Their unselfish labors made it possible to remove many errors from printed editions and thus improve the quality of our results. We renew our expression of gratitude for their help. We are also grateful to Mervat Seif el-Din and Jean-Yves Empereur for making it possible for us to study an excellent photograph of Lef. 67 and to Todd Hickey for information about an unpublished fragment joining P.Erl. 87.
The manuscript of the first edition was read in penultimate form by Dieter Hagedom and David Thomas, to its great benefit. That of the current edition has been read by Nikolaos Gonis, Dieter Hagedom, Nico Kruit, Adam Lajtar, Bemhard Palme, and John Rea. Giovanni Ruffini removed many blemishes from the final proofs. All these have improved the book immeasurably and deserve the reader's gratitude as well as ours. The remaining faults, of course, are our own.
We also recorded in our preface to the first edition, and would here repeat, our debt to our late colleague P. J. Sijpesteijn, who not only discussed with us many problems treated in these pages but had to bear with the process of the writing of the book at a time when all of us had ‘many other obligations. In dedicating the second edition to his memory we recall that ‘extraordinary year of collaborative work that we spent in 1976-1977.
INTRODUCTION
well-enough suited to the purpose of distinguishing the curent year from last year or a few years ago.' The methods of designating years which we find in documents were matters of official proclamation and thus were adapted to the needs and nature ofthe state. The use of eponymous ‘magistrates, the normal means of identifying years in Greek cities and at Rome, worked well in relatively small states where the dissemination of the name or names in question would be virtually instantaneous, but it had self-evident drawbacks in a large territorial state, where difficulties of communication were considerable and would amplify any political turmoil that might delay the announcement of names.
It was natural enough, therefore, that in the Seleucid {kingdom a fixed era (based on the satrapal and then regnal count of Seleucus 1) was introduced,’ and that the Ptolemies reckoned (like kings of Egypt before them) by regnal years.” Everyone could keep track of such continuous counts with not too much difficulty, at least until the king changed. When Augustus acquired Egypt in 30 B.C., he retained the Ptolemaic system of regnal dating, and for over three centuries Roman emperors followed his example
For the historian, the effect of a system of reckoning used in the documents may be very different from the effect for a contemporary. The ancients found this already, for in the fifth ‘century B.C. the Athenians found that it was necessary to reconstruct and to publish a systematic list of archons to avoid confusion; itis only for a few Greek cities that either the ancients or we hhave had any idea at all of the sequence of eponymous magistrates, and even the Athenian list has been a constant subject of scholarly controversy. Our confusion is not ours only, but in part that of our ancient predecessors.
tis scarcely surprising that moder scholars have found grave ficulties with the methods ‘of dating documents used in the papyri from Byzantine Egypt.’ We find in these texts six distinct systems of referring to years, which we treat in the following chapters: regnal years, which ‘change as emperors do (Chapter 6 and Appendix F); epigraphai and indictions, both in cycles of fixed length which thus cause the same year number to recur at set intervals (Chapters 1-5); of Oxythynchos, which owe their existence to regnal counts prolonged beyond the deaths of the emperors in question and which constitute permanent continuous counts (Chapters 7 and 8). The manner in which these systems are interelated is set out in tabular form in Appendix C. After the Arab conquest of Egypt in 641, the conquerors introduced the Hi commonly referred to in Greek and Coptic documents as the era of or according to the Saracenes; because of the coexistence of this era in Greek and Coptic documents with other systems that we discuss, we have added table for convenient reference to Saracene years (Appendix I). In the next few pages we describe briefly the interrelationship of the systems, the problems involved in their concurrent use, and some aspects of regional variation in their ‘employment. The details of the individual systems are not repeated here, and the reader is referred to the relevant chapters for these.
The Systems and their Interrelation
Although the chaotic conditions of the fifty years before Diocletian's accession in 284/5 must have made regnal rather confusing for scribes, Diocletian continued the traditional system, wit his second regnal year beginning on Thoth 1 next after his accession (to be dated 20.xi.284, see Bares 1982: 4 n. 4), and when Maximianus was associated with in ‘year, a double numbering of 2-1 (285/6) was adopted, as of shortly before 286 (BGU IV 1090.34, ef. ZPE 61 [1985] 99 n. 1). As we describe in Chapter 6, the only real precedent under the empire for such numbering was the peculiar use of dual ‘numerals during the Palmyrene domination of Egypt. When the tetrarchy was established (1.ii.293), « numeral was added for the new Caesars, the year thus becoming in midyear 9-8-1 (~ 292/3). From then on, the habit of giving numbers for each emperor (or multiple ‘emperors with the same date of accession) became regular leading to long strings.
Meanwhile, the government had introduced into Egypt in May/June 287 a new system of reckoning for fiseal purposes, the epigraphe, which was apparently the equivalent of the Latin delegatio.* Properly speaking, the epigraphai referred only to the tax assessments, the first being in 287, the second in 288, and so forth. We find in the documents clear evidence of three five-year cycles of epigraphai up 302, after which the term passes completely out of uuse in the papyri. The epigraphai bore on the crop just harvested at this time; that is, epigraphe \ fell on the crop of regnal year 3-2 (28677), harvested in late spring 287. The use of a five-year cycle shows clear intention of introducing a means of fiscal reckoning which ‘was not exactly coterminous with regnal years. The epigraphai appear only in connection with tax payments and never independently to designate years, but the cyclic and annual pattern ‘must nonetheless have given them some independent existence.
In 302 the last of these numbered tax declarations was issued. For the next five years we have no evidence of any particular use of numbered tax schedules, but in 308/9 we find reference to the indiction of a regnal year or, rather, to an indiction numbered the same as the regnal year (e.g., the 17th indiction in 308/9 = Galerius’ regnal year 17); usually only the highest-numbered regnal year is given, but at other times the full sequence is found. There is still no sign of true chronological reckoning by such indictions, but a direct connection with regnal years inthis manner (and, unlike the regnal years, often using only the highest numeral) certainly tended to give the indiction some status as a chronological unit, atleast in loose speech.
uls for dating Egyptian documents. In the period before Diocletian, consular dates hardly appear except in documents written in Latin or between Roman citizen parties and drafted according to Roman law.” From 284 to 293, only two Egyptian documents are dated by the consuls, one of them a manumissio inter amicos.® But beginning in 293 (P-Lips. 14 and 5 are the earliest examples, on 10.ix) we commonly find consular dates in ordinary Greek documents, and the practice becomes steadily more standard as time goes on.
Its difficult to avoid the conclusion that the introduction of consular dating is in some ‘way connected to the creation of the first tetrarchy in March, 293; it seems likely, furthermore, that the use of consuls was one more part of Divcletian’s policy of making more widespread the use of Roman institutions in the East, as well as that of integrating Egypt more closely into ‘normal patterns of imperial administration—a policy also served, for example, by the ‘numismatic reforms three years later.
‘The use of regnal dating in the papyri and ostraka (Chapter 6 and Appendix F) remains ‘elatively constant up to 312/3, even while consular dating gains in frequency. But after 313/4, ‘egnal dating declines drastically, and in fact the use of actual formulas of regnal titulature is ‘extinct after 316; even citation of regnal years without formula is by 316 extremely rare except in the Oxyrhynchite and Herakleopolite nomes. This decline is perhaps partly a reflection of the weariness of scribes in dealing with the excessively complicated and mutable ‘egnal dates in the decade before, but itis difficult to avoid the conclusion that it was the system of numbered indictions that dealt the coup de grice to the use of references to years by regnal numbers and that the practice in the Oxythynchite and Herakleopolite reflects a rather conservative attitude on the part of scribes in these two nomes.
The introduction of the indiction system into Egypt is described in detail later in this chapter. It was apparently the product of the administration brought into Egypt by Licinius in his partnership with Constantine after the death of Maximinus, but the exact beginnings of indictional reckoning, which may lie outside Egypt, are not clearly documented. The indiction ‘came into use somewhat more rapidly in Upper Egypt than in Lower, it seems, with the ‘Arsinoite nome relatively slow and the Oxythynchite even slower; Oxythynchos, indeed, held ‘on to regnal dating to a large degree even beyond Constantine's death. The indiction did not, ‘generally speaking, replace regnal dating for the main date of legal documents (where in any ‘case regnal dating was disappearing in favor of consulates) but only for reference 10 a year ‘and, as it appears, for an easy year date in private receipts, orders and the like. In the dating ‘clauses of legal instruments and official business, itis the consulate which appears from ‘henceforth. After the start of the tetrarchy, therefore, i is the beginning of the control of Egypt by the government of Licinius and Constantine that is the second major watershed, in which these two Diocletianic innovations reach a full development and virtually completely oust system of dating in use for some 350 years, or, if one counts Ptolemaic regnal reckoning, for nearly 650.
This pair, indictions and consulates, with their rather different spheres of usage, dominate chronological reckoning for the next two centuries, until 537. The two era-type systems ‘mentioned above, however, come into use for specialized areas. An era reckoned by the accession of Diocletian appears in the fourth century in the Philae graffiti (both Greek and Demoti), in reckoning birth dates for purposes of casting horoscopes, and in some literary or theological contexts." It is used exclusively for these purposes until the late fifth century, ‘when it begins to be used also on gravestones (the earliest certain instance is SB Il 6250, 491/2 or 492/3). The eras of Oxythynchos, on the other hand, grow out of the Oxyrhynchite predilection for continued regnal dating and represent in their final form a continuation of the ‘egnal years of Constantius Il and Julian."? These Oxyrhynchite era-years are used much as the indiction is elsewhere, for reference to years and for dating short texts (viz. receipts and orders for payment). The era-year ran from Thoth 1 to Epagomenai 5(6), the traditional Egyptian civil year; the indiction was reckoned differently in different areas, as we show in this book. ‘The era-years did not oust the indiction for fiscal reckoning, but the indiction never achieved in Oxythynchos the position it did elsewhere of being the dominant and best-known chronological index in use.
This situation remained in formal use until Justinian’s Novella 47 in A.D. $37.) In the ‘meantime, however, a large variety of factors caused consuls to be announced in Egypt very late in a large proportion of the years ofthe fifth and early sixth centuries, reducing seriously the usefulness and, eventually, the accuracy of the consulate, for confusion between consulate ‘and postconsulate gradually became more widespread, and postconsulate at times referred to a ‘year later than that immediately following the consulate. It is even conceivable that scribes ‘became so used to postconsular reckoning as to suppose at times that any newly announced consuls must be already out of office.
Justinian ordered that all legal instruments bear the regnal year of the emperor, the names ‘of the consuls and the indiction number, all three of them. Regnal years were to be computed ‘not in the old Egyptian manner (perhaps now forgotten), but from the day of accession to the ‘throne (whether to the status of Caesar or of Augustus) to its anniversary. The Egyptian documents do not reflect prompt and uniform compliance, for many still have only the consulate (or consulate and indiction) while others have all three, and the first attestation of ‘egnal dating comes only in $39. For the next century, one finds various combinations in the documents of various nomes. The use of dating by consuls generally declined as the consulate ‘was no longer held by private persons after S41, and emperors may be said in general to hold consular status rather than to have eponymous consulates in the old sense. Justinus Il, exceptionally, had a second consulate. Consular dating, therefore, was by definition postconsular dating, until $66 by FI. Basilius (cos. $41), afterward by the reigning emperor. As Phocas and Heraclius the consulate is less often mentioned and rarely without the regnal year. In Chapter 6 some of the problems caused by the unification of consular and regnal dating are dealt with.
In the early seventh century, thus, regnal dating was once again the standard means of ‘giving dates to legal instruments, with the indiction still the standard dating method for ‘shorter texts and for reference to fiscal years; in Oxyrhynchos, the era-years continued in use. During the decade of Persian occupation the indiction cycle was continued undisturbed, but of ‘course reference to Byzantine emperors was not used. When the restored Byzantine rule was ‘swept aside in 641 by the Arabs, once again the indiction continued, but the regnal and ‘consular dates naturally disappeared, and the Oxyrhynchite era similarly vanishes after a last documentary appearance in 644/S (SB VI 8987) and a contract written as a scribal exercise referring to era-year 345/314, or A.D. 68/9 (T.Varie 8). The non-Arab Egyptian population, however, still felt the need of some means of reckoning which was more permanent than the indiction cycle, and we can hardly doubt that the Saracene era (years of the Hijra, on which see Appendix I) was unpalatable to most of the conquered population. It is at this time—on present evidence, more precisely in 657 or 658 (see Chapter 8 for the documentation) —that the Era of Diocletian is first used in papyrus documents. Despite its complex origins, this era ‘was ultimately interpreted as a specifically Christian mode of reckoning and given the name [Era of the “Martyrs,” thus bringing us back to a reckoning from the accession of Diocletian in Coptic use down to the present.
Problems with Multiple Modes of Reckoning
It will be clear from what is said above that the multiplicity of dating systems, while confusing to the historian and papyrologist, is mitigated somewhat by the chronological differentiation of their periods of use. Even within a given period, not all of the known systems will be found simultaneously in most documents. From the earliest uses in 293 on, ‘consular dating had a restricted range of use, being found almost exclusively in actual dating clauses; in a few cases there is a reference to a past document or event by means of the ‘consulate. But its use was strictly chronological. Some documents of 293 t0 ca. 315 have both ‘consulate and regnal year. The use of regnal dating in the period from Justinian to Heractius ‘was also purely chronological, and this duplication of systems performing the same function in the later period contributed greatly, we may be sure, to the atrophy of consulates and the tendency of scribes to omit one of the two dates, to assimilate them, and finally to discard ‘consulates altogether. The indiction system, by contrast, was originally used to refer to fiscal ‘years and crops and to date minor documents; its use in later times for general dating did not ‘cause it to lose its fiscal implication, and it never suffered any real duplication of function ‘except to some degree in Oxyrhynchos with its local era.
‘Nevertheless, we find a number of documents in which more than one of these systems is ‘used at the same time; the number of such documents naturally increases sharply after 540, ‘with the addition of another dating criterion, and so also do cases in which the various criteria for the date disagree. The scribes were capable of errors, but most of them fall into a few “consulate,” where werd tiv Oxareiav, “after the consulate,” should have been written. The bulk of these fall early inthe julian year and are most readily explicable in terms of simple slip of memory, in the absence of the proclamation of new consuls. In the middle and later sixth century, especially, when only the year number of a postconsular era changed, a slip was ‘as natural as it is for us to write mistakenly the old year number in January. The problem must hhave been compounded by the fact that the Roman year was not the year by which the scribes really worked and lived; it was no doubt easy to forget that on Tybi 6 a new consular year began.
‘Whether the same was as true of regnal years, which also, according to Justinian's orders, ‘changed at a time of year not associated otherwise with the beginning of the year, is harder to say. There are certainly some such errors, but studies of the documents of some reigns has tended to the conclusion that deliberate assimilation of some of the differing years may be responsible for what at first look like errors; in other words, the difficulty was handled (at {east in Oxyrhynchos) by assimilating the regnal year to the civil year. These questions are discussed in Chapter 6.
‘The Oxythynchite era-years, on the other hand, seem almost never to be demonstrably wrong; they were evidently a source or reflection of local pride and were kept track of properly. The indiction is nearly as accurate, for it was the one system which ordinary people probably kept in mind as their taxes were connected to it, and only rarely does an indictional reference seem to be in error (see Appendix BID).
Regionalism
‘One further factor which has for a long time caused difficulties to scholars—because it ‘went largely unrecognized—is the profound differences from one region of Egypt to another in the way in which certain chronological systems were applied. A few examples have already ‘been mentioned: the predilection of the Oxyrhynchite nome for regnal dating after it had been abandoned elsewhere in Egypt; the creation in the same nome of an idiosyncratic system of ‘ra-dating; the greater alacrty of Upper Egypt in adopting the indiction system compared to Lower Egypt. One other should be mentioned, the restriction of the use of the Era of Diocletian in papyrus documents to the Arsinoite and Herakleopolite nomes, $0 far as our evidence shows, until in the eighth century Coptic documents from Thebes start t0 use ‘There are other quirks of this kind which are treated below in relation to formulaic peculiarities.
‘The most striking area of regional individualism is that of the working of the indiction cycle. In Chapter 4 we describe these differences in detail. They show different patterns, and particularly different starting dates for the indiction year, in the Thebaid (the Hermopolite ‘nome and all to its south), and in the nomes of Middle Egypt, the Arsinoite, Oxyrhynchite, Herakleopolite and Memphite nomes. Underlying these differences is a generally uniform structure involving the preliminary and final tax schedules, but the results for chronological reckoning are varied even below the level ofthe provinces into which Egypt was divided this period.
‘The other noteworthy area of regional differences is that ofthe use of regnal formulas and titulature im the period from Justinian on. For example, the Arsinoite nome under Justinus 1 apparently uses consular dating exclusively still under Mauricius, Other nomes vary also, but ‘we find that in general the nomes of the Thebaid agree in large part with one another. These divergences go even to petty matters like the choice of epithet for the emperor or the inclusion ‘or not of the phrase pénotos evepyims, “greatest benefactor,” which does not appear in the Arsinoite until Heraclius. It is also interesting that under Justinian, the epithet used for the ‘consul Fl. Basilius, by whose postconsular years one normally dated, was in all cases Aayinpdratos in Arcadia but évBog6eatos or navedonios (the latter much less common) in the ‘Thebaid."*
‘The peculiarities of Oxyrhynchite usage we are inclined to ascribe to local choices, given the uniqueness of the systems used. The Herakleopolite, largely dependent on the Oxythynchite,” followed it to a great degree but not entirely. For the rst, it seems more likely thatthe division ofthe province of Egypt fostered variant usage (such as had always existed, ‘one compares the diversity of tax receipt formulas in Roman times, for example) by broader regions in addition to the traditional diversity of the nomes. Particularly in the sixth century it is difficult to suppose that local initiative by the citizenry was responsible for much of what wwe see. It should be remarked, finally, that this regional variation is—once recognized—a ‘boon to the scholar, since it allows approximate or precise assignment of provenances to documents which are otherwise of unknown origin.
‘The Introduction of the Indiction
Early in the development of papyrology, documents began to appear from the Byzantine ppetiod (see above, n. 5) which showed a system of referring to crops, taxes and years by ‘numbered indictions. A system of indictions occurring in fifteen-year cycles and related to {taxation was already known from literary and legal sources and was discussed in the sixteenth ‘century, when indictions were still in use in some parts of Europe. But the papyri brought growing quantities of new evidence, which prompted an increasingly animated discussion of ‘many aspects of indictions in the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth” The most important of these questions argued were (a) when was ‘an indiction cyele first introduced? (b) was it always fifteen years, or were other lengths used? ‘and (c) when an indiction year is used, at what time of year did it begin and end? To all of these something like a consensus emerged, which may be summarized as follows:”! For at least 15 years, namely between 297 and 312, the Roman government issued tax-declarations ‘annually, calling them epigraphai or indictions, These declarations were grouped in five-year ‘ycles, with at least three such cycles occurring. In 312, then, began the regular use of a fifteen-year cycle, the cycle length used ever after. The indiction year began at a variable time in early to mid summer, declared each year by the government after the harvest. The crops just harvested were nevertheless counted as those of the indiction beginning after the harvest, pethaps because the taxes were collected in the new indiction
‘Although this series of propositions attained the status of near-orthodoxy, it did so in the absence of any full collection of the evidence conceming indictions and a full discussion thereof. Only the dissertation of Goodrich in 1937, which remained unpublished (except through University Microfilms) and thus virtually unknown, attempted such an inquiry, and Goodrich’s account, though at many points useful, is very deficient.” In the following ‘chapters: we will argue that almost every element of this theory is either wrong or in need of ‘modification.
‘The primary focus of the next chapters is on the operations of the indiction system in Egypt after 312. The period from 287 to 302 needs no lengthy treatment here, as it has been the subject of a full discussion by J. D. Thomas, whose conclusions we follow.” To ‘summarize briefly: starting in 287, the imperial government issued each year, in May or June {at least for Egypt; the date may have been different elsewhere) a tax schedule called variously ‘éxxypaq (the earliest and most common term), Surrinwor; (= Lat. delegatio), and ivBvxtiov (a term found only after 297/8%). These epigraphai were numbered in cycles, from | to $, and three of these cycles took place over the 15 years from 287 to 302. None of the terms cited is a ‘chronological term: all of them refer to the fiscal act of declaring the tax levy for the current ‘year, These terms are never used for dating, but only to qualify tax payments, to indicate for ‘which assessment they were made.
This system lapsed after the fifth Suarbwos of spring, 301, but the term dtarimoois continued to be used to describe the tax schedule. We have no indication at all for the years from 302-308 to indicate that any kind of numbering was used. But we find, starting in 308/9, ‘anew type of designation for the tax schedule; it is now called by a numbered indiction. The ‘numbers given are in the main equal to the regnal years of Galerius, the senior emperor at the time; but in a few cases, we find a more complete regnal year given, i.e. not only the regnal ‘year of Galerius but also those of junior emperors. It may be useful to present this material in the form of a chart (Table 1, p.9).
Kase explained the manner of reckoning shown in this chart (so far as the examples were ‘known to him) as referring to the regnal years of Galerius, and he held that we should read, ‘eg. in SB XVI 12340.8, 10 (Zrovs) ivbactiovos: in other words, he consistently expands the ‘sinusoidal curve (plus strokes if present) to (Erovc).** While it is undeniably true that this ‘curve had this meaning in Roman papyri, and while it may sometimes be justifiable to s0 interpret it in early Byzantine papyri, it is manifestly not the case that the curve must be ‘expanded in this fashion, for it may as well be simply a numeral marking?” If one compares the examples in the chart from SB XIV 12167 = P.Erl.Diosp. 2 with those from P.Jand. VIII 152 of P.Princ.Roll, one can see that the justification for expanding the curve to (éxovc) is very weak. Furthermore, it must be said that the Greek of a phrase like tfi¢ 10 (Erovc) all the available evidence we conclude that one should properly speak of the “18th indiction” ‘or whatever, not of “the indiction of the 18th year.” It remains true, however, that the numbers used are those of Galerius’ regnal years, that the system is not attested before he became senior emperor, and that the use of his regnal years to designate years and indictions persists after his death—until 314/S for numbering indictions, until 317/8 for mumbering years.
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