Diocletian v. Harris Part 2, Price Controls

Piece of Diocletian’s edict on maximum prices in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin

Diocletian’s price control list, where I started down this rabbit hole, is fascinating. Like Harris, Diocletian started with food:

and booze

The meat counter down at the Forum looks a lot more interesting than at Whole Foods:

but let’s not price-gouge veggies either:

Diocletian understood that wages are prices too, so he included maximum wages

Obviously, this is a rabbit hole for historians, who get a list of just what occupations the romans had, and what items they bought, and get a sense of what prices meant.

Academics are not excepted from the wage maximum.

The list really gets going for manufactured goods:

Diocletian included prescription drug prices too!

“Price gouging” by ocean shippers was all the rage in the late pandemic. Diocletian too:

I am astounded that roman emperors had the bureaucratic capacity to come up with this list, first of all, and then to imagine enforcing it throughout the Mediterranean.

Of course it failed. It failed to contain inflation. But it also threw a huge monkey wrench into the Roman economy. Trade did decline. Hoarders did hoard, suppliers did not supply. More deeply, combined with taxes assessed on traded goods, it led to more and more self-sufficiency inside large estates, not using money for transactions, presaging the Middle Ages. As you know, things didn’t turn out so well for the Roman Empire in the end.

Inflation is only a tiny part of Diocletian’s reign, and he is remembered today as by and large a very good emperor. Diocletian is also the only roman emperor to have voluntarily retired, to raise cabbages at his villa. A good example for many contemporary politicians. He was also one of very few who could retire, and could and did die of natural causes.

(Continues in Part 3, Diocletian v. Harris)