Blackwell Reference Online

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The major political changes in Egypt during the Graeco-Roman Period had significant consequences for the economy. Property rights and other legal institutions surrounding the economy were gradually transformed, so that an observer familiar with conditions in Ptolemaic Egypt would hardly recognize many of the economic institutions of the later Roman Empire. The difficulty is to assess whether changes in institutions had positive effects on the economy, in the sense of promoting economic growth and the welfare of a broad class of people. Some economic growth resulted from an increase in Egypt's population, which grew at a modest rate, at least until the late second century ad before the onset of the Antonine plague in 166–7. At its height, this population is reasonably estimated at around five million people, with a high estimate of seven million (Frier 2000: 812; Manning 2003c: 47–8; Rathbone 2007: 699–700, 706–7). Although it is difficult to gauge the level of mortality caused by the plague, it seems highly likely that in Egypt it caused substantial loss of population as well as significant disruption to the economy (Zelener 2003; Duncan-Jones 1996; Bagnall 2000, 2002; Scheidel 2002), but, perhaps more so than in other parts of the ancient world, economic life in Egypt was regularly subject to deadly diseases that killed people in the prime of their lives, when they would be most ... log in or subscribe to read full text