What things cost in ancient Rome • Hacker News Board

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#21

Post by bd » Sun, Feb 08, 2009, 9:49 PM UTC

Here is another list, a bit different, with more goods and professions and with some additional commentary (though based on the same historical source):

http://www.constantinethegreatcoins.com/edict/

There is some interesting information, for example about soldiers pay and costs, exchange rates or about a death penalty for refusing to sell goods at the stated price.

Also silk prices have been crazy: 12,000 denarii for a libra of white silk and a whopping 150,000 denarii for a purple silk (use of which was regulated by the Emperor with misuse punishable by a death penalty).

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#22

Post by tptacek » Sun, Feb 08, 2009, 10:15 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #18

swombat wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This question is meaningless. Why? 1) The value of the denarius was clearly subject to inflation, and so varied greatly. You could say "how much was the denarius worth of October 1st, 10 AD?", but that value would have changed by the next day. In fact, around the time this edict was proclaimed, clearly the value of the denarius was inflating rapidly. 2) The only way you could come up with a relative value for even on…

What remains comparable is how much humans need to eat in a day. So it could be meaningful to work out how many people a day's wage could feed back then and use that as a baseline to calculate the imaginary USD/DRI exchange rate.

How does that help you? The price of different foodstuffs varies wildly both in ancient Rome and today.

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#23

Post by tokenadult » Sun, Feb 08, 2009, 10:20 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #6

Very interesting read! It seems that once again, those that don't study history are bound to repeat it. It's noteworthy how teachers were paid 'by the pupil', and how architecture is apparently lower on the social ladder than rhetoric. An advocates fee for a pleading works out to teaching 5 pupils geometry for a month. Some things never change!

It's noteworthy how teachers were paid 'by the pupil'

Indeed, the Roman author Quintilian held teachers who insisted on small class-sizes in contempt, as mere "pedagogues" (by etymology, slaves who baby-sat children), and insisted that a skilled teacher could handle a large class by his rhetorical power.

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#24

Post by jacquesm » Sun, Feb 08, 2009, 10:29 PM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #23

jacquesm wrote: post #6

Very interesting read! It seems that once again, those that don't study history are bound to repeat it. It's noteworthy how teachers were paid 'by the pupil', and how architecture is apparently lower on the social ladder than rhetoric. An advocates fee for a pleading works out to teaching 5 pupils geometry for a month. Some things never change!

It's noteworthy how teachers were paid 'by the pupil' Indeed, the Roman author Quintilian held teachers who insisted on small class-sizes in contempt, as mere "pedagogues" (by etymology, slaves who baby-sat children), and insisted that a skilled teacher could handle a large class by his rhetorical power.

I've seen that difference up close, we had a math teacher in high school that was a fairly small, unassuming little guy. But he radiated a fair amount of power and whenever he lectured you could have heard a pin drop in the pauses. The year after we got one of the 'pedagogues', the grade point average dropped right through the floor and pandemonium was more likely than order. Same kids... what a difference.

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#25

Post by swombat » Sun, Feb 08, 2009, 10:54 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #22

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What remains comparable is how much humans need to eat in a day. So it could be meaningful to work out how many people a day's wage could feed back then and use that as a baseline to calculate the imaginary USD/DRI exchange rate.

How does that help you? The price of different foodstuffs varies wildly both in ancient Rome and today.

Exactly.

Think of it as "scarcity distribution" if you will. The typical food basket cost a different amount then than now. And there are plenty of times when most people could barely afford to eat (e.g. the early industrial age, when most factory workers were barely paid a living wage).

A good example of the differences that make this discrepancy so large is the price of salt. Just now, the department in charge of road gritting in the UK has announced that it's out of gritting salt, so they're planning to use table salt instead. Flash back two thousand years ago, and salt was so precious that it was used as a currency to pay soldiers (hence the name "salary").

Other commodities suffer from similar differences, not only with 2000 years of distance, but even closer to us. As pg pointed out, many things which are available today for a dollar were unthinkable even 50 years ago. All these discrepancies make it impossible to compute any sort of exchange rate between dollars and denarii. You can make one up in your head, but it's pure fantasy.

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#26

Post by pg » Sun, Feb 08, 2009, 11:00 PM UTC

bd wrote: post #21

Here is another list, a bit different, with more goods and professions and with some additional commentary (though based on the same historical source): http://www.constantinethegreatcoins.com/edict/ There is some interesting information, for example about soldiers pay and costs, exchange rates or about a death penalty for refusing to sell goods at the stated price. Also silk prices have been crazy: 12,000 denarii fo…

Incidentally, that site is wrong about why silk was so expensive. The problem was not lack of machines, but that in Roman times it was imported overland from China.

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#27

Post by pg » Sun, Feb 08, 2009, 11:02 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #5

sam_in_nyc wrote: post #2

History is a fascinating topic. It's a bit hard to make sense of this without seeing it converted into current units ($/lb or something).

Isn't it a bit hard to do that without a detailed, possibly subjective study of what the scarcities were in Rome? The dollar isn't anchored to the value of ten asses anymore, and salt is basically free.

An As was a bronze coin.

http://www.coin.com/cgi-local/find1Coins.cgi?47261

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#28

Post by tptacek » Sun, Feb 08, 2009, 11:19 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #27

tptacek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it a bit hard to do that without a detailed, possibly subjective study of what the scarcities were in Rome? The dollar isn't anchored to the value of ten asses anymore, and salt is basically free.

An As was a bronze coin. http://www.coin.com/cgi-local/find1Coins.cgi?47261

Learn something new every day!

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#29

Post by bd » Sun, Feb 08, 2009, 11:56 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #26

bd wrote: post #21

Here is another list, a bit different, with more goods and professions and with some additional commentary (though based on the same historical source): http://www.constantinethegreatcoins.com/edict/ There is some interesting information, for example about soldiers pay and costs, exchange rates or about a death penalty for refusing to sell goods at the stated price. Also silk prices have been crazy: 12,000 denarii fo…

Incidentally, that site is wrong about why silk was so expensive. The problem was not lack of machines, but that in Roman times it was imported overland from China.

Indeed, in these times China had a monopoly for silk production [1].

It would be also interesting to know prices of spices, other luxury product driving international trade in ancient times [2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_silk

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incense_Route, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#30

Post by dmix » Mon, Feb 09, 2009, 12:34 AM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #3

Love the flowery language. Yep -- anybody who thinks government can control prices should take a look at history. This kind of thinking goes back a long ways. Wiki has the result: "However, the Edict did not solve the problem, as Diocletian's mass minting of coins of low metallic value continued to increase inflation, and the maximum prices in the Edict were apparently too low. Merchants either stopped producing good…

Ancient Rome had a population of roughly one million people. That's quite a large market for a government to attempt to manipulate back then, especially before any financial system had matured. Now with populations a hundred times the size and economies many times more complex, its interesting how they are still trying.