"A book that zooms in on the daily lives of ordinary people". Giovanni Ruffini uses the abundant documentary evidence from sixth century Oxyrhynchos and Aphrodito and the techniques of social network analysis to map relationships and transactions between people and groups; it is the first time that this method has been applied to the ancient world. He combines a prosopographical survey of both sites with computer analyses of the topographical and social networks in their papyri. He thereby uncovers hierarchical social structures in Oxyrhynchos not present in Aphrodito, and is able for the first time to trace the formation of the famous Apion estate. He also uses quantitative techniques to locate the central players in the Aphrodito social landscape, allowing us to see past the family of Dioskoros to discover the importance of otherwise unknown figures. He argues that the apparent social differences between Oxyrhynchos and Aphrodito in fact represent different levels of geographic scale, both present within the same social model. The author is Assostant Professor of History at Fairfield University in Connecticut.