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What things cost in Ancient Rome (2007)
- ogogmad 5y ago> The cost of baking bread was very high to a poor Roman, so if no access to a communal, public oven could be had, the grain would be crushed and made into a porridge known as ‘puls’ that was likely similar in taste and texture to modern polenta According to Wikipedia, "the variety of cereal used [in the dish Polenta] is usually yellow maize", which is a New World cereal, so not available to the Romans.
- monocasa 5y agoI mean, the article says that puls was similar to polenta, not that it was polenta. Puls was typically made with farro.
- ogogmad 5y agoWould it have been similar in taste and texture to a dish usually made from yellow maize?
- monocasa 5y agoYes, crushed and boiled farro is similar to crushed and boiled corn.
- kkfx 5y agoI do not try it crushed, but I do try "modern" farro (due to classic seeds selection I can't really say how similar to ancient one it is) and it's not much similar to corn, grains are bigger, absorb more water, have a bit more taste. They are still not beans but definitively more tasty even if chewy. However we also should consider that ancient eating habits were FAR different than actual ones, so was life. It's very hard to compare "prices" in completely different societies... In some part of our history there were a big abundance of certain products, in some other a big deficiency, in the '700 in western European countries most people eat FAR more than now to a point we can't probably sustain the rhythm today, in the '300 there was a very deep crisis and most people have nearly nothing to eat etc. Prices can't be a unique measure like today. Just imaging a society where most families do have a bit of farm animals, for them does it matter their "price"? They raise chickens at home, so they have eggs and meat, what sense does the price of these "products" makes to them? They might just trade them to the few who travel at an accordingly high price, but local "poor" do have them in their own backyard for "free". Similarly if most people outside cities (so most people numerically in general) grow wheat in their own backyard how much it matter it's price? They trade it for wealthy people living in cities or as taxes, to create strategic stocks handled by their governments to cope with regular crisis, that's form the price, not what people have to pay really for it.
- monocasa 5y agoThe crushing them before boiling is what makes them similar. It ends up being a starchy paste with little uncrushed nodules interspersed.
- airstrike 5y agoHow do people know so many seemingly random things on HN is beyond me
- naniwaduni 5y agoTurning into starchy paste with uncrushed nodules interspersed is, like, what usually happens when you take starchy plant bits and crush and boil them.
- tuatoru 5y ago> Just imaging a society where most families do have a bit of farm animals That wasn't ancient Rome, though. Poor people in Rome lived in (or around) insulae - apartment buildings.
- kkfx 5y agoPoor people in Rome were just a little fraction of poor. At that time Rome itself was what we call a small city today, vast majority of people living outside and poor people inside are mostly slaves of the rich inside, no "ordinary free Citizens". Beside that "apartments" never exists in Rome, there were various size of Domus (houses) with "apartments" for servant, surveillance etc but they were nothing like what we call apartments these days. The most similar thing conceptually can probably be named "colonial homes".
- monocasa 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insula_(building) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insula_(building) Only the very wealthy lived in a domus.
- ogogmad 5y agoCrushed and boiled sweetcorn tastes like something made from wheat? If true, TIL.
- monocasa 5y agoPolenta isn't made with sweet corn, but a more starch heavy variety.
- adrian_b 5y agoNow polenta is made with maize, because it is more tasteful. However in the ancient Rome the meaning of the words was different. "Polenta" was barley porridge and "puls" was emmer porridge. Both were eaten by those who could not afford bread. "Polenta" was made from "alica", which was a kind of semolina made from barley.
- ogogmad 5y ago> Now polenta is made with maize, because it is more tasteful. Which means that the article's claim that it was "probably identical in taste and texture" is wrong. Which was my point.
- gumby 5y ago> According to Wikipedia, "the variety of cereal used [in the dish Polenta] is usually yellow maize", which is a New World cereal, so not available to the Romans. It's quite possible that "polenta" was a generic term for "seeds mushed and baked into a savoury cake" that later evolved into a more specialized use. Sort of how the generic term "corn" now refers specifically only to maize (and to maize in general, so shedding all of its meaning in the process) in American English for some reason while its cognate "kernel" does not.
- ogogmad 5y agoOK. My comment expresses scepticism that something made from sweetcorn tastes like something made from Old World wheat. It quoted a claim from the article that I didn't think likely to be true.
- dannywarner 5y agoMany prices of goods are not dissimilar numbers to the numbers on Australian or American prices now. Print of beer 4, or a bottle of wine 8 to 20. This reminds me of The Economist Big Mac index (https://www.economist.com/big-mac-index https://www.economist.com/big-mac-index). The income is of course lower, however.
- TMWNN 5y ago>The income is of course lower, however. Yes, but perhaps not as much as one might expect. Relevant Reddit post: TIL that the Roman Empire in the year 150 was so wealthy that all of Western Europe may not have equaled its GDP until 1500 (<https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3prsxr/til_that_the_roman_empire_in_the_year_150_was_so/ https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3prsxr/til_th...>)
- hogehoge51 5y agoI was hoping someone would take this data and calculate an approximate Big Mac index. I big difference is the price of poultry vs beef, perhaps indicative of the industrialisation potential of poultry farming vs beef farming that has since been realised.
- swagasaurus-rex 5y agoI’m surprised by how expensive chicken was. 8 for beef, 60 for chicken?
- stu2b50 5y agoCheap chicken is a very recent thing - like mid 1900s recent. Chickens need to feed on grain (unlike cattle), and chickens also produce eggs (unlike pigs), which means that they're both relatively expensive to raise (before industrial farming made grain cheap as well) and have a huge opportunity cost to slaughter for meat.
- masklinn 5y agoTwo other items to add to the list: Modern chickens have ridiculously bulked up, and their feeding has been highly optimised, with the fastest growing breeds you can turn out a 4lbs broiler in 6 weeks, roman chickens would be far less optimised for meat, and as you note feed grain would be scarcer, so turning out a chicken for meat would also take a lot more time (hence even more expenses). Similarly, dairy cow had been far less optimised, and so had dairy “husbandry”. Furthermore, cow milk was considered quite inferior to goat or sheep (not to mention ancient rome would have had pretty high levels of lactose intolerance, which are less of an issue with sheep and especially goat milk — a fact sometimes noted by roman writers e.g. Pliny). Thus dairy cow husbandry would have little presence in Roman culture, instead cattle was mostly work (oxen) and meat. Therefore the only balance (and opportunity cost) would be between these two, not unlike horse.
- Amezarak 5y agoChickens do not need to feed on grain. They are omnivores that eat almost anything. You can just feed them table scraps and let them forage.
- daniel-cussen 5y agoTable scraps, what? When food is half of income, table scraps are much more meager, much less left on the table, and there's a whole pecking order of who eats what cuts of meat (hopefully meat) and everything else. All the way from the breadwinner down to the pig. Foraging? Yeah if you don't mind foxes eating them, which is like the favoritest thing a fox can want. They figure out chicken coops built with way higher production values with chicken wire and the like, in the present day, back in Rome it must have been a cakewalk. And I don't blame the foxes, nor do I blame native Chilean cats that do the same, rather it's just to easy to prey on this flightless bird humans feed to eat. The whole concept of animal domestication, really, it's fish in a barrel.
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- spapas82 5y agoCan someone explain the purple silk price and penalty?
- master_crab 5y agoPurple dye in the day was made from hundreds of ground up snails. And the color was, as I understood it, an official representation of the emperor. So akin to falsely representing oneself as the emperor. I'm sure someone else might have more details on the penalty and dye-making process.
- daniel-cussen 5y agoHundreds? I think way more, the snails seem to have evolved to produce very little purple, it seems the Phoenicians killed the juicy ones preferentially. I've read the process in Medieval times required...don't know like tens of kilograms of snail for enough purple to die one item. Like bad economics.
- detaro 5y agoExtremely expensive to make (made from a gland in some species of sea snail, so lots of work), which thus turned into a symbol of power, which then was reinforced by restrictions on its use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple#History
- airstrike 5y agoFrom that Wikipedia link, "for scale": > In nature, the snails use the secretion as part of their predatory behavior in order to sedate prey and as an antimicrobial lining on egg masses.[14][b] The snail also secretes this substance when it is attacked by predators, or physically antagonized by humans (e.g., poked). Therefore, the dye can be collected either by "milking" the snails, which is more labor-intensive but is a renewable resource, or by collecting and destructively crushing the snails. > David Jacoby remarks that "twelve thousand snails of Murex brandaris yield no more than 1.4 g of pure dye, enough to colour only the trim of a single garment."
- foogazi 5y ago> All data based on Diocletian’s “Edict of Maximum Prices” issued in 301 AD > Not satisfied to execute just the seller, Diocletian decreed that the buyer was to be executed as well.
- xenomachina 5y agoImmediately after: > As a final measure, if a seller refused to sell his goods at the stated price, the penalty was death. So if you have something you don't want to sell, too bad? But then there's a simple loophole, too: once you've sold the thing, you can buy it back for the same price, and the original buyer, now the seller, can't refuse.
- dsr_ 5y agoNot quite. You are leaving out the condition "if you are in the business of selling things, and this is a thing you have for sale". If you were a vegetable seller, you would not be required to sell your table or your wagon. If you were a cook buying vegetables, you would not be required to sell the vegetables that you just purchased.
- Ralfp 5y agoAs a slav I find it amusing how free grain from gov was called by "dole" by Romans where we have concept of "dola" which used to be your patron spirit quietly influencing your life but in modern times its basically something you've got that you've deserved (according to higher force or destiny), be it thing, health, wealth or life experience.
- have_faith 5y agoIn the UK today being “on the dole” means to receive government benefits while you’re not working.
- bradrn 5y agoAlso in Australia. (This was actually my first thought while reading grandparent.)
- aidenn0 5y agoIn the US as well, but it's considered archaic
- petesergeant 5y agoalso to "dole out" meaning to distribute
- hoten 5y agoWhat's the reasoning behind the odd payment structure for solders?
- opportune 5y agoThis is super cool. I found the price of beef surprisingly low given the “minimum wage” of 25 per day, meaning a common laborer could’ve afforded two modern pounds of beef with some money left over. Of course people probably had many dependents per laborer and these were fixed prices so who knows what kind of shortages there were… In theory though, a min wage laborer with no dependents could have very comfortably had 1lb of beef per day if they wanted.
- aidenn0 5y agoThe median laborer was a farmer, and my understanding is they mostly what they ate
- vgel 5y agoFor context, the Edict on Maximum Prices was such a dismal failure that Diocletian ended up retiring shortly after issuing it... so take the restrictiveness and exact prices with a grain of salt (0.0001).
- number6 5y agoIn Durrants The Lessons of History there is a whole chapter on price control. The gist of it: it works most of the times but when it fails ot fails dramatically taking down the whole state with it
- jackcosgrove 5y agoI love history like this. I want to read a history book that does normalized comparisons across time and place. For example, given how many calories you need, how much did a calorie cost in a given historical setting? This would help you understand how much surplus was available to most people.
- mbil 5y agoI forget where I read this, but haircut cost can be used as a reasonable reference point for translating old prices into today's dollars. Modern basic haircutting is quite similar to what it always has been, and takes about the same amount of time. So saying a haircut costs $50 in a big city now, and it was 2 denarii communes in Ancient Rome: 1 d.c. == $25. Here is general labor data in today's dollars | labor | $USD | d.c. | |:-----------------------------------------------------------------------|:-----|:-----| | brick maker, for every 4 fired bricks and preparation of the clay | 50 | 2 | | brick maker, for every 8 sun dried bricks, and preparation of the clay | 50 | 2 | | clerk (based on specified bath attendant wage) | 625 | 25 | | farm laborer, with maintenance | 625 | 25 | | lime burner, with maintenance | 1250 | 50 | | mule driver, camel driver, with maintenance | 625 | 25 | | sewer cleaner, working a full day, with maintenance | 625 | 25 | | shepherd, with maintenance | 625 | 25 | | water carrier, working a full day, with maintenance | 625 | 25 | | all other general labor | 625 | 25 | I put the whole set in a file here: https://matthewbilyeu.com/what-things-cost-ancient-rome.txt
- boomboomsubban 5y agoI think you're benchmark may be off. Barbers were something often visited daily, primarily shaving beards. Plus, those wages seem to be daily and the idea of a general laborer earning $625 a day is pretty nuts. Even assuming 12 hour days that's $50 an hour.
- mbil 5y agoYeah, a clear direct comparison is elusive and maybe impossible. This Reddit thread [0] talks about the difficulties of converting value. I thought it would be thought provoking to see a rough comparison to today's costs through some frame of reference. Your sibling comment points out some other issues with this approach. [0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3x0b7o/how_much_would_a_roman_denarius_be_in_usd_today/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3x0b7o/how_m...
- j7ake 5y agoIn the last table for converting d.c. for gold, one gold aureus is about 8 grams of gold, which is about 512 usd in today’s dollars. I feel gold might be a stable indicator to assess prices over time.
- _4gzn 5y agoI am copying a previous comment of mine[-2] below. But first let me estimate the cost of food for one day in Diocletian's empire. I do not feel like solving a linear programming problem with ancient food so I substituted Roman ingredients from 301 A.D. for similar Polish ingredients from 2016 A.D. 400 g of rye bread = 400 g of rye flour = 0.95 liters[-1] = 7 d.c. 100 g of wheat flour = 0.2 liters[-1] = 2.5 d.c. 250 g of beans = 0.33 liters[-1] = 4 d.c 100 g of beef = 0.3 librae = 2.5 d.c 100 g of dessert grapes = 0.5 d.c 80 g of olive oil (second quality) = 0.09 liters[-1] = 4 d.c 1/2 litre of Egyptian beer = 4 d.c Total: 24.5 denarii communes for raw ingredients. Add 20% for condiments and cooking, and get roughly 30 denarii communes for 1 trofa. ----------------------------------- Here goes the previous comment[-2]: A Polish numismatist, Zbigniew Żabiński, came up with trofa (from Greek trophe 'alimentation'), a universal measure of the value of money. One trofa is defined as an average person's daily ration of food typical for the given place and time. Altogether, it has 3000 kcal: 1800 kcal in 450 g of carbohydrates, 900 kcal in 100 g of fat, and 300 kcal in 75 g of protein. For instance, in late 1970s' Poland, one trofa consisted of 400 g of rye bread, 100 g of wheat flour, 250 g of potatoes, 100 g of beef, 100 g of sugar, 80 g of butter, and 1/2 litre of milk. Assuming that its content has not changed, you take the cost of the food (8.70 PLN in 2016), add 20% for condiments and preparation, and get 10.50 PLN as the 2016 price of a trofa in Poland.[0] In Octavian's times, one denarius could buy you 2 trofas (with content appropriate for ancient Mediterranean lands),[0] Judas's 30 pieces of silver were worth 60 trofas,[1] etc. Unfortunately, Żabiński published in Polish behind the Iron Curtain so the trofa is virtually unknown outside Poland. The Big Mac index is its pale reflection. More information in Polish: [-2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22777042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22777042 [-1] https://coolconversion.com/ https://coolconversion.com/ [0] A table of trofa's price from Octavian's Rome to contemporary Poland: http://blognumizmatyczny.pl/2016/03/14/trofa-miernik-wartosci-pieniadza/ http://blognumizmatyczny.pl/2016/03/14/trofa-miernik-wartosc... [1] Thirty pieces of silver: https://bazhum.muzhp.pl/media//files/Collectanea_Theologica/Collectanea_Theologica-r1973-t43-n2/Collectanea_Theologica-r1973-t43-n2-s65-75/Collectanea_Theologica-r1973-t43-n2-s65-75.pdf https://bazhum.muzhp.pl/media//files/Collectanea_Theologica/... [2] The purchasing power in medieval Balkans: https://repozytorium.amu.edu.pl/bitstream/10593/8080/1/11_Zbigniew_Zabinski_Sila_nabywcza_pieniadza_na_Balkanach_227-232.pdf https://repozytorium.amu.edu.pl/bitstream/10593/8080/1/11_Zb... [3] Google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=Żabiński+trofa https://www.google.com/search?q=Żabiński+trofa
- DeathArrow 5y agoIt would be interesting to see see it translated into modern money via gold prices.