The Common People of Ancient Rome / Studies of Roman Life and Literature

Diocletian's Edict and the High Cost of Living

The history of the growth of paternalism in the Roman Empire is still to be written. It would be a fascinating and instructive record. In it the changes in the character of the Romans and in their social and economic conditions would come out clearly. It would disclose a strange mixture of worthy and unworthy motives in their statesmen and politicians, who were actuated sometimes by sympathy for the poor, sometimes by a desire for popular favor, by an honest wish to check extravagance or immorality, or by the fear that the discontent of the masses might drive them into revolution. We should find the Roman people, recognizing the menace to their simple, frugal way of living which lay in the inroads of Greek civilization, and turning in their helplessness to their officials, the censors, to protect them from a demoralization which, by their own efforts, they could not withstand. We should find the same officials preaching against race suicide, extravagant living, and evasion of public duties, and imposing penalties and restrictions in the most autocratic fashion on men of high and low degree alike who failed to adopt the official standards of conduct. We should read of laws enacted in the same spirit, laws restricting the number of guests that might be entertained on a single occasion, and prescribing penalties for guests and host alike, if the cost of a dinner exceeded the statutory limit. All this belongs to the early stage of paternal government. The motives were praiseworthy, even if the results were futile.

With the advent of the Gracchi, toward the close of the second century before our era, moral considerations become less noticeable, and paternalism takes on a more philanthropic and political character. We see this change reflected in the land laws and the corn laws. To take up first the free distribution of land by the state, in the early days of the Republic colonies of citizens were founded in the newly conquered districts of Italy to serve as garrisons on the frontier. It was a fair bargain between the citizen and the state. He received land, the state, protection. But with Tiberius Gracchus a change comes in. His colonists were to be settled in peaceful sections of Italy; they were to receive land solely because of their poverty. This was socialism or state philanthropy. Like the agrarian bill of Tiberius, the corn law of Gaius Gracchus, which provided for the sale of grain below the market price, was a paternal measure inspired in part by sympathy for the needy. The political element is clear in both cases also. The people who were thus favored by assignments of land and of food naturally supported the leaders who assisted them. Perhaps the extensive building of roads which Gaius Gracchus carried on should be mentioned in this connection. The ostensible purpose of these great highways, perhaps their primary purpose, was to develop Italy and to facilitate communication between different parts of the peninsula, but a large number of men was required for their construction, and Gaius Gracchus may well have taken the matter up, partly for the purpose of furnishing work to the unemployed. Out of these small beginnings developed the socialistic policy of later times. By the middle of the first century B.C., it is said that there were three hundred and twenty thousand persons receiving doles of corn from the state, and, if the people could look to the government for the necessities of life, why might they not hope to have it supply their less pressing needs? Or, to put it in another way, if one politician won their support by giving them corn, why might not another increase his popularity by providing them with amusement and with the comforts of life? Presents of oil and clothing naturally follow, the giving of games and theatrical performances at the expense of the state, and the building of porticos and public baths. As the government and wealthy citizens assumed a larger measure of responsibility for the welfare of the citizens, the people became more and more dependent upon them and less capable of managing their own affairs. An indication of this change we see in the decline of local self-government and the assumption by the central administration of responsibility for the conduct of public business in the towns of Italy. This last consideration suggests another phase of Roman history which a study of paternalism would bring out—I mean the effect of its introduction on the character of the Roman people.

The history of paternalism in Rome, when it is written, might approach the subject from several different points. If the writer were inclined to interpret history on the economic side, he might find the explanation of the change in the policy of the government toward its citizens in the introduction of slave labor which, under the Republic, drove the free laborer to the wall and made him look to the state for help, in the decline of agriculture, and the growth of capitalism. The sociologist would notice the drift of the people toward the cities and the sudden massing there of large numbers of persons who could not provide for themselves and in their discontent might overturn society. The historian who concerns himself with political changes mainly, would notice the socialistic legislation of the Gracchi and their political successors and would connect the growth of paternalism with the development of democracy. In all these explanations there would be a certain measure of truth.

But I am not planning here to write a history of paternalism among the Romans. That is one of the projects which I had been reserving for the day when the Carnegie Foundation should present me with a wooden sword and allow me to retire from the arena of academic life. But, alas! the trustees of that beneficent institution, by the revision which they have lately made of the conditions under which a university professor may withdraw from active service, have in their wisdom put off that day of academic leisure to the Greek Kalends, and my dream vanishes into the distance with it.

Here I wish to present only an episode in this history which we have been discussing, an episode which is unique, however, in ancient and, so far as I know, in modern history. Our knowledge of the incident comes from an edict of the Emperor Diocletian, and this document has a direct bearing on a subject of present-day discussion, because it contains a diatribe against the high cost of living and records the heroic attempt which the Roman government made to reduce it. In his effort to bring prices down to what he considered a normal level, Diocletian did not content himself with such half-measures as we are trying in our attempts to suppress combinations in restraint of trade, but he boldly fixed the maximum prices at which beef, grain, eggs, clothing, and other articles could be sold, and prescribed the penalty of death for any one who disposed of his wares at a higher figure. His edict is a very comprehensive document, and specifies prices for seven hundred or eight hundred different articles. This systematic attempt to regulate trade was very much in keeping with the character of Diocletian and his theory of government. Perhaps no Roman emperor, with the possible exception of Hadrian, showed such extraordinary administrative ability and proposed so many sweeping social reforms as Diocletian did. His systematic attempt to suppress Christianity is a case in point, and in the last twenty years of his reign he completely reorganized the government. He frankly introduced the monarchical principle, fixed upon a method of succession to the throne, redivided the provinces, established a carefully graded system of officials, concerned himself with court etiquette and dress, and reorganized the coinage and the system of taxation. We are not surprised therefore that he had the courage to attack this difficult question of high prices, and that his plan covered almost all the articles which his subjects would have occasion to buy.

It is almost exactly two centuries since the first fragments of the edict dealing with the subject were brought to light. They were discovered in Caria, in 1709, by William Sherard, the English consul at Smyrna. Since then, from time to time, other fragments of tablets containing parts of the edict have been found in Egypt, Asia Minor, and Greece. At present portions of twenty-nine copies of it are known. Fourteen of them are in Latin and fifteen in Greek. The Greek versions differ from one another, while the Latin texts are identical, except for the stone-cutters' mistakes here and there. These facts make it clear that the original document was in Latin, and was translated into Greek by the local officials of each town where the tablets were set up. We have already noticed that specimens of the edict have not been found outside of Egypt, Greece, and Asia Minor, and this was the part of the Roman world where Diocletian ruled. Scholars have also observed that almost all the manufactured articles which are mentioned come from Eastern points. From these facts it has been inferred that the edict was to apply to the East only, or perhaps more probably that Diocletian drew it up for his part of the Roman world, and that before it could be applied to the West it was repealed.

From the pieces which were then known, a very satisfactory reconstruction of the document was made by Mommsen and published in the Corpus of Latin Inscriptions.88

The work of restoration was like putting together the parts of a picture puzzle where some of the pieces are lacking. Fragments are still coming to light, and possibly we may have the complete text some day. As it is, the introduction is complete, and perhaps four-fifths of the list of articles with prices attached are extant. The introduction opens with a stately list of the titles of the two Augusti and the two Cæsars, which fixes the date of the proclamation as 301 A.D. Then follows a long recital of the circumstances which have led the government to adopt this drastic method of controlling prices. This introduction is one of the most extraordinary pieces of bombast, mixed metaphors, loose syntax, and incoherent expressions that Latin literature possesses. One is tempted to infer from its style that it was the product of Diocletian's own pen. He was a man of humble origin, and would not live in Rome for fear of being laughed at on account of his plebeian training. The florid and awkward style of these introductory pages is exactly what we should expect from a man of such antecedents.

It is very difficult to translate them into intelligible English, but some conception of their style and contents may be had from one or two extracts. In explaining the situation which confronts the world, the Emperor writes: "For, if the raging avarice ... which, without regard for mankind, increases and develops by leaps and bounds, we will not say from year to year, month to month, or day to day, but almost from hour to hour, and even from minute to minute, could be held in check by some regard for moderation, or if the welfare of the people could calmly tolerate this mad license from which, in a situation like this, it suffers in the worst possible fashion from day to day, some ground would appear, perhaps, for concealing the truth and saying nothing; ... but inasmuch as there is only seen a mad desire without control, to pay no heed to the needs of the many, ... it seems good to us, as we look into the future, to us who are the fathers of the people, that justice intervene to settle matters impartially, in order that that which, long hoped for, humanity itself could not bring about may be secured for the common government of all by the remedies which our care affords.... Who is of so hardened a heart and so untouched by a feeling for humanity that he can be unaware, nay that he has not noticed, that in the sale of wares which are exchanged in the market, or dealt with in the daily business of the cities, an exorbitant tendency in prices has spread to such an extent that the unbridled desire of plundering is held in check neither by abundance nor by seasons of plenty!"

If we did not know that this was found on tablets sixteen centuries old, we might think that we were reading a newspaper diatribe against the cold-storage plant or the beef trust. What the Emperor has decided to do to remedy the situation he sets forth toward the end of the introduction. He says: "It is our pleasure, therefore, that those prices which the subjoined written summary specifies, be held in observance throughout all our domain, that all may know that license to go above the same has been cut off.... It is our pleasure (also) that if any man shall have boldly come into conflict with this formal statute, he shall put his life in peril.... In the same peril also shall he be placed who, drawn along by avarice in his desire to buy, shall have conspired against these statutes. Nor shall he be esteemed innocent of the same crime who, having articles necessary for daily life and use, shall have decided hereafter that they can be held back, since the punishment ought to be even heavier for him who causes need than for him who violates the laws."

The lists which follow are arranged in three columns which give respectively the article, the unit of measure, and the price.89

The first item (frumentum) is wheat, which is sold by the K̄M̄ (kastrensis modius=18½ quarts), but the price is lacking. Barley is sold by the kastrensis modius at Ⅹ̶ centum (centum denarii = 43 cents) and so on.

Usually a price list is not of engrossing interest, but the tables of Diocletian furnish us a picture of material conditions throughout the Empire in his time which cannot be had from any other source, and for that reason deserve some attention. This consideration emboldens me to set down some extracts in the following pages from the body of the edict:

Throughout the lists, as one may see, articles are grouped in a systematic way. First we find grain and vegetables; then wine, oil, vinegar, salt, honey, meat, fish, cheese, salads, and nuts. After these articles, in chapter VII, we pass rather unexpectedly to the wages of the field laborer, the carpenter, the painter, and of other skilled and unskilled workmen. Then follow leather, shoes, saddles, and other kinds of raw material and manufactured wares until we reach a total of more than eight hundred articles. As we have said, the classification is in the main systematic, but there are some strange deviations from a systematic arrangement. Eggs, for instance, are in table VI with salads, vegetables, and fruits. Bücher, who has discussed some phases of this price list, has acutely surmised that perhaps the tables in whole, or in part, were drawn up by the directors of imperial factories and magazines. The government levied tribute "in kind," and it must have provided depots throughout the provinces for the reception of contributions from its subjects. Consequently in making out these tables it would very likely call upon the directors of these magazines for assistance, and each of them in making his report would naturally follow to some extent the list of articles which the imperial depot controlled by him, carried in stock. At all events, we see evidence of an expert hand in the list of linens, which includes one hundred and thirty-nine articles of different qualities.

As we have noticed in the passage quoted from the introduction, it is unlawful for a person to charge more for any of his wares than the amount specified in the law. Consequently, the prices are not normal, but maximum prices. However, since the imperial lawgivers evidently believed that the necessities of life were being sold at exorbitant rates, the maximum which they fixed was very likely no greater than the prevailing market price. Here and there, as in the nineteenth chapter of the document, the text is given in tablets from two or more places. In such cases the prices are the same, so that apparently no allowance was made for the cost of carriage, although with some articles, like oysters and sea-fish, this item must have had an appreciable value, and it certainly should have been taken into account in fixing the prices of "British mantles" or "Gallic soldiers' cloaks" of chapter XIX. The quantities for which prices are given are so small—a pint of wine, a pair of fowls, twenty snails, ten apples, a bunch of asparagus—that evidently Diocletian had the "ultimate consumer" in mind, and fixed the retail price in his edict. This is fortunate for us, because it helps us to get at the cost of living in the early part of the fourth century. There is good reason for believing that the system of barter prevailed much more generally at that time than it does to-day. Probably the farmer often exchanged his grain, vegetables, and eggs for shoes and cloth, without receiving or paying out money, so that the money prices fixed for his products would not affect him in every transaction as they would affect the present-day farmer. The unit of money which is used throughout the edict is the copper denarius, and fortunately the value of a pound of fine gold is given as 50,000 denarii. This fixes the value of the denarius as .4352 cent, or approximately four-tenths of a cent. It is implied in the introduction that the purpose of the law is to protect the people, and especially the soldiers, from extortion, but possibly, as Bücher has surmised, the emperor may have wished to maintain or to raise the value of the denarius, which had been steadily declining because of the addition of alloy to the coin. If this was the emperor's object, possibly the value of the denarius is set somewhat too high, but it probably does not materially exceed its exchange value, and in any case, the relative values of articles given in the tables are not affected.

The tables bring out a number of points of passing interest. From chapter II it seems to follow that Italian wines retained their ancient pre-eminence, even in the fourth century. They alone are quoted among the foreign wines. Table VI gives us a picture of the village market. On market days the farmer brings his artichokes, lettuce, cabbages, turnips, and other fresh vegetables into the market town and exposes them for sale in the public square, as the country people in Italy do to-day. The seventh chapter, in which wages are given, is perhaps of liveliest interest. In this connection we should bear in mind the fact that slavery existed in the Roman Empire, that owners of slaves trained them to various occupations and hired them out by the day or job, and that, consequently the prices paid for slave labor fixed the scale of wages. However, there was a steady decline under the Empire in the number of slaves, and competition with them in the fourth century did not materially affect the wages of the free laborer. It is interesting, in this chapter, to notice that the teacher and the advocate (Nos. 66-73) are classed with the carpenter and tailor. It is a pleasant passing reflection for the teacher of Greek and Latin to find that his predecessors were near the top of their profession, if we may draw this inference from their remuneration when compared with that of other teachers. It is worth observing also that the close association between the classics and mathematics, and their acceptance as the corner-stone of the higher training, to which we have been accustomed for centuries, seems to be recognized (VII, 70) even at this early date. We expect to find the physician mentioned with the teacher and advocate, but probably it was too much even for Diocletian's skill, in reducing things to a system, to estimate the comparative value of a physician's services in a case of measles and typhoid fever.

The bricklayer, the joiner, and the carpenter (VII, 2-3a), inasmuch as they work on the premises of their employer, receive their "keep" as well as a fixed wage, while the knife-grinder and the tailor (VII, 33, 42) work in their own shops, and naturally have their meals at home. The silk-weaver (XX, 9) and the linen-weaver (XXI, 5) have their "keep" also, which seems to indicate that private houses had their own looms, which is quite in harmony with the practices of our fathers. The carpenter and joiner are paid by the day, the teacher by the month, the knife-grinder, the tailor, the barber (VII, 22) by the piece, and the coppersmith (VII, 24a-27) according to the amount of metal which he uses. Whether the difference between the prices of shoes for the patrician, the senator, and the knight (IX, 7-9) represents a difference in the cost of making the three kinds, or is a tax put on the different orders of nobility, cannot be determined. The high prices set on silk and wool dyed with purple (XXIV) correspond to the pre-eminent position of that imperial color in ancient times. The tables which the edict contains call our attention to certain striking differences between ancient and modern industrial and economic conditions. Of course the list of wage-earners is incomplete. The inscriptions which the trades guilds have left us record many occupations which are not mentioned here, but in them and in these lists we miss any reference to large groups of men who hold a prominent place in our modern industrial reports—I mean men working in printing-offices, factories, foundries, and machine-shops, and employed by transportation companies. Nothing in the document suggests the application of power to the manufacture of articles, the assembling of men in a common workshop, or the use of any other machine than the hand loom and the mill for the grinding of corn. In the way of articles offered for sale, we miss certain items which find a place in every price-list of household necessities, such articles as sugar, molasses, potatoes, cotton cloth, tobacco, coffee, and tea. The list of stimulants (II) is, in fact, very brief, including as it does only a few kinds of wine and beer.

At the present moment, when the high cost of living is a subject which engages the attention of the economist, politician, and householder, as it did that of Diocletian and his contemporaries, the curious reader will wish to know how wages and the prices of food in 301 A.D. compare with those of to-day. In the two tables which follow, such a comparison is attempted for some of the more important articles and occupations.

We are not so much concerned in knowing the prices of meat, fish, eggs, and flour in 301 and 1911 A.D. as we are in finding out whether the Roman or the American workman could buy more of these commodities with the returns for his labor. A starting point for such an estimate is furnished by the Eighteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, on the "Cost of Living and Retail Prices of Food" (1903), and by Bulletin No. 77 of the Bureau of Labor (1908). In the first of these documents (pp. 582, 583) the expenditure for rent, fuel, food, and other necessities of life in 11,156 normal American families whose incomes range from $200 to $1,200 per year is given. In the other report (p. 344 f.) similar statistics are given for 1,944 English urban families. In the first case the average amount spent per year was $617, of which $266, or a little less than a half of the entire income, was used in the purchase of food. The statistics for England show a somewhat larger relative amount spent for food. Almost exactly one-third of this expenditure for the normal American family was for meat and fish.94 Now, if we take the wages of the Roman carpenter, for instance, as 21 cents per day, and add one-fourth or one-third for his "keep," those of the same American workman as $2.50 to $4.00, it is clear that the former received only a ninth or a fifteenth as much as the latter, while the average price of pork, beef, mutton, and ham (7.3 cents) in 301 A.D. was about a third of the average (19.6 cents) of the same articles to-day. The relative averages of wheat, rye, and barley make a still worse showing for ancient times while fresh fish was nearly as high in Diocletian's time as it is in our own day. The ancient and modern prices of butter and eggs stand at the ratio of one to three and one to six respectively. For the urban workman, then, in the fourth century, conditions of life must have been almost intolerable, and it is hard to understand how he managed to keep soul and body together, when almost all the nutritious articles of food were beyond his means. The taste of meat, fish, butter, and eggs must have been almost unknown to him, and probably even the coarse bread and vegetables on which he lived were limited in amount. The peasant proprietor who could raise his own cattle and grain would not find the burden so hard to bear.

Only one question remains for us to answer. Did Diocletian succeed in his bold attempt to reduce the cost of living? Fortunately the answer is given us by Lactantius in the book which he wrote in 313-314 A.D., "On the Deaths of Those Who Persecuted (the Christians)." The title of Lactantius's work would not lead us to expect a very sympathetic treatment of Diocletian, the arch-persecutor, but his account of the actual outcome of the incident is hardly open to question. In Chapter VII of his treatise, after setting forth the iniquities of the Emperor in constantly imposing new burdens on the people, he writes: "And when he had brought on a state of exceeding high prices by his different acts of injustice, he tried to fix by law the prices of articles offered for sale. Thereupon, for the veriest trifles much blood was shed, and out of fear nothing was offered for sale, and the scarcity grew much worse, until, after the death of many persons, the law was repealed from mere necessity." Thus came to an end this early effort to reduce the high cost of living. Sixty years later the Emperor Julian made a similar attempt on a small scale. He fixed the price of corn for the people of Antioch by an edict. The holders of grain hoarded their stock. The Emperor brought supplies of it into the city from Egypt and elsewhere and sold it at the legal price. It was bought up by speculators, and in the end Julian, like Diocletian, had to acknowledge his inability to cope with an economic law.