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An average worker in Ancient Rome is not really comparable to a worker in a modern country (e.g he likely would had spent >50% of his income on food, so equival
by qwytw 5y ago
An average worker in Ancient Rome is not really comparable to a worker in a modern country (e.g he likely would had spent >50% of his income on food, so equivalent wage would probably below the minimum wage in US).
The prices in Diocletian's degree don't really make much sense, e.g. for 40 Denarii you could buy ~5 pounds of beef or only 8 pounds of rye/barley. So likely the price for tunics is quite a bit higher than the real market price. Based on 1st AD prices/wages a tunic cost 15 sestertii which is equal to around 3-4 days wage (a "worker" likely earned ~ 4 sestertii per day)
- zach_garwood 5y agoThe average worker in ancient Rome was a slave.
- qwytw 5y agoThe proportion of slaves in the entire Roman Empire never rose to much more than 15-20% also by 300 AD serfdom had already started to replace slavery in rural areas.
- NikolaeVarius 5y agoNo they weren't.
- helloworld11 5y agoDiocletian's price control decrees were for this reason and many others widely hated, widely ignored and widely worthless at stemming rampant inflation. (just as draconian price controls today suffer a similar fate in countries where leaders try to stem the consequences of their own economic mismanagement with arbitrary rules of fluid prices.)