CHAPTER XX 



Diocletian's edict, 301 a.d. — prices of fish and 

 other articles then and now 



Struck with Adam's words with regard to the Edict of 

 Diocletian, 301 a.d. — " if we could fix the value of the denarius 

 at this epoch, the prices of fish then would prove an interesting 

 subject for comparison with those now (1883) current at 

 Billingsgate " — I set to work to ascertain how great had been 

 the depreciation of and what was the exact value of the 

 denarius at the opening of the fourth century. 



Much labour would have been saved, had I earlier come 

 across Abbott's The Common People of Ancient Rome, but I 

 found some compensation in the solution of my sum coinciding 

 approximately with his estimate of the denarius ="4352 cent.^ 



The Edict of Diocletian 2 contains, as Mr, Abbott (to 

 whose book I am indebted for very much that follows) indicates, 

 many points of great economic interest to us at the present time. 



First — sentences of the Introduction (probably from 

 intrinsic evidence written by the Emperor himself) might well 

 pass for a diatribe in to-day's paper against a Beef or other 

 Trust. Fortunate it is for these that the newspaper man 

 possesses not the power of life and death wielded by Diocletian. 



^ London, 1912. Note, however, that Hultsch in Pauly-Winowa, Real- 

 enc. (Stuttgart, 1903), V. 211, says : ' Damit war aus dem Silber-D., der noch 

 unter Severus einen Metallwert von etwa 30 Pfennig gehabt hatte . . . eine 

 kleine Scheidemiinze zum Curswerte von i, 8 Pfennig oder Weniger geworden.' 

 On this showing the denarius had sunk to i| pfennigs in 301 a.d. 



2 Fragments of the Edict in Latin and in Greek have been coming to 

 hght for the last two centuries from Egypt, Greece and Asia Minor — not the 

 least important being found by W. M. Leake; see his Edict of Diocletian, 1826. 

 See also Mommsen's Inscriptiomim Latinarum, vol. IIL pp. 1926-1953, the 

 text of which was published by H. Bliimner with a commentary in 1893 in his 

 Der Maximaltarif des Diocletian. A convenient account of this famous 

 Edict, together with a full bibliography, is given by H. Bliimner in Pauly- 

 Winowa, Real. Enc. (Stuttgart), V. pp. 1948-1957, 



285 



