CHAPTER XX 
DIOCLETIAN’S EDICT, 30I 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? 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. 
1 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 1, 8 Pfennig oder Weniger geworden.’ 
On this showing the denarius had sunk to 14 pfennigs in 301 a.D. 
2 Fragments of the Edict in Latin and in Greek have been coming to 
light 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 Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. III. pp. 1926-1953, the 
text of which was published by H. Bliimner with a commentary in 1893 in his 
Dev Maximaltarif des Diocletian. A convenient account of this famous 
Edict, together with a full bibliography, is given by H. Blimner in Pauly- 
Winowa, Real, Enc. (Stuttgart), V. pp. 1948-1957, 
285 , 
