A Social and Cultural History of Late Antiquity by Douglas Boin

Author:Douglas Boin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781119076988
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2018-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

The Edict on Maximum Prices, 301 CE

One surviving law is Diocletian’s “Edict on Maximum Prices,” an emergency economic measure known from several fragments of Greek and Latin inscriptions that have been found overwhelmingly in the eastern Mediterranean. These texts on stone make tantalizing statements about the nature of the late third‐century and early fourth‐century economy. For, as the modern name of this one text suggests, Diocletian’s price decree set the maximum amount that merchants could charge for goods and services, starting in 301 CE. The preamble to the law makes clear that it applied throughout the entire empire (CIL 3, p. 801). Although it does not seem to have worked, Diocletian’s law was an audacious attempt to regulate the economy during a time when prices for nearly every staple of the Roman pantry and kitchen – grain, beans, different types of wine, olive oil, honey, lamb, goat – were rising. Wages for everyone from the mule drivers to barbers and to tailors needed to be legislated from the palace. For that reason alone, as the sign of top‐down interventionism, the “Edict on Maximum Prices” remains one of the most intriguing pieces of the economic puzzle of the late third century CE.

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