A Constantinople Loan, A.D. 541

Nearly all the Greek papyri from Egypt concern the people of upcountry villages and towns--Syene, Aphrodito, Hermopolis, Oxyrhynchus, to mention several of the most important late antique sites. Rarely do the papyri broach the "exchangist world" of Fernand Braudel or S. D. Goitein with their thriving cities, long-distance trade, and commerical banking.2 Alexandria finds relatively frequent mention in the papyri, but cities beyond Egypt are rarely mentioned, and in the late antique period even the imperial capital, Constantinople, comes into play only a handful of times. No doubt this is because the ancient economy, and Egypt's most especially, was founded on an agricultural base and the labor of masses of peasants, and because the papyri concern mostly local affairs. Consequently, evidence for credit activities, though abundant, comes mainly in the form of upcountry contracts of loan, orders for payment, and crop sales with deferred delivery; but even these activities had an ultimately agrarian base and were not the province of professional bankers.