Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls

Appendix B

The Edict of Diocletian Fixing Maximum Prices and Wages

This remarkable document exists in no French or German and in only one almost complete English translation* which is presented here. The preamble is published almost in its entirety and a representative sample of the more than one thousand individual prices and wages is appended to it.

“1. The national honor and the dignity and majesty of Rome demand that the fortune of our State—to which, next to the immortal gods, we may, in memory of the wars which we have successfully waged, return thanks for the tranquil and profoundly quiet condition of the world—be also faithfully administered and duly endowed with the blessings of that peace for which we have laboriously striven; to the end that we, who under the gracious favor of the gods have repressed the furious depredations, in the past, of barbarous tribes by the destructions of those nations themselves, may for all time gird with the bulwarks due to justice the peace which has been established.

“2. To be sure, if any spirit of self-restraint were holding in check those practices by which the raging and boundless avarice is inflamed, an avarice which, without regard for the human race, not yearly or monthly or daily only, but almost every hour and even every moment, hastens toward its own development and increase; or if the common fortunes could with calmness bear this orgy of license, by which, under their unhappy star, they are from day to day ripped to pieces—peradventure there would seem to be room left for shutting our eyes and holding our peace, since the united endurance of men’s minds would ameliorate this detestable enormity and pitiable condition.

“3. But since it is the sole desire of untamed fury to feel no love for the ties of our common humanity; and since among the wicked and lawless it is held to be, so to speak, the religious duty of an avarice that swells and grows with fierce flames, that, in harrying the fortunes of all, it should desist of necessity rather than voluntarily. . .

“4. And of this matter, it is true, as the common knowledge of all recognizes and indisputable facts proclaim, the consideration is almost too late, since we form plans or delay discovered remedies in the hope that, as was to be expected from natural justice, humanity, detected in most odious crimes, might work out its own reformation; for we thought it far better that the censure of intolerable robbery should be removed from the court of public opinion by the feeling and decision of those men themselves, who rush daily from bad to worse and in a sort of blindness of mind tend toward outrages upon society, and whom their grave misdoing has branded as enemies alike to individuals and to the community, and guilty of the most atrocious inhumanity.

“5. Therefore we proceed promptly to apply the remedies long demanded by the necessity of the case, and that too, feeling no concern about complaints that our corrective interference may, as coming unseasonably or unnecessarily, be considered cheaper or less valuable even in the eyes of the wicked, who, though seeing in our silence of so many years a lesson in self-restraint, nevertheless refused to follow it.

“6. For who has so dull a breast, or is so alien to the feeling of humanity, that he can be ignorant, nay rather has not actually observed that in commodities which are bought and sold in markets or handled in the daily trade of cities, the wantonness in prices had progressed to such a point that the unbridled greed for plundering might be moderated neither by abundant supplies nor by fruitful seasons?

“7. So that there is clearly no doubt that men of this sort, whom these occupations have engaged, are always mentally calculating and even seeking, from the motions of the stars, to take advantage of the very winds and seasons, and by reason of their wickedness cannot bear that the fields be watered and made productive by the rains of heaven, so as to give hope of future crops, since they consider it a personal loss for abundance to come to the world by the favorable moods of the sky itself.

“8. And to the avarice of those who are always eager to turn to their own profit even the blessings of the gods, and to check the tide of general prosperity, and again in an unproductive year to haggle about the sowing of the seed and the business of retail dealers; who, individually possessed of immense fortunes which might have enriched whole peoples to their heart’s content, seek private gain and are bent upon ruinous percentages of profit—to their avarice, ye men of our provinces, regard for common humanity impels us to set a limit.

“9. But now, further, we must set forth the reasons themselves, whose urgency lias at last compelled us to discard our too long protracted patience, in order that—although an avarice which runs riot through the whole world can with difficulty be laid bare by a specific proof, or rather fact—none the less the nature of our remedy may be known to be more just, when utterly lawless men shall be forced to recognize, under a definite name and description, the unbridled lusts of their minds.

“10. Who therefore can be ignorant that an audacity that plots against the good of society is presenting itself with a spirit of profiteering, wherever the general welfare requires our armies to be directed, not only in villages and towns, but along every highway? That it forces up the prices of commodities not fourfold or eightfold, but to such a degree that human language cannot find words to set a proper evaluation upon their action? Finally, that sometimes by the outlay upon a single article the soldier is robbed both of his bounty and of his pay, and that the entire contributions of the whole world for maintaining the armies accrue to the detestable gains of plunderers, so that our soldiers seem to yield the entire fruit of their military career, and the labors of their entire term of service, to these profiteers in everything, in order that the pillagers of the commonwealth may from day to day carry off all that they resolve to have?

“11. Being justly and duly moved by all these considerations above included, since already humanity itself seemed to be praying for release, we resolved, not that the prices of commodities should be fixed—for it is not thought just that this be done, since sometimes very many provinces exult in the good fortune of the low prices which they desire, and as it were in a certain privileged state of abundance—but that a maximum be fixed; in order that, when any stress of high prices made its appearance—which omen we prayed the gods might avert— avarice, which could not be checked on the so-to-speak endlessly extending plains, might be confined by the bounds of our statute and the limits set in the law promulgated to control them.

“12. It is our pleasure, therefore, that those prices, which the concise items of the following list indicate, be held in attention throughout our whole domain, in such a way that all men understand that freedom to exceed them is removed; while at the same time, in those places where goods manifestly abound, the happy condition of cheap prices shall not thereby be hampered—and ample provision is made for cheapness, if avarice is limited and curbed.

“13. Between sellers, moreover, and buyers whose custom it is to enter trading-ports and visit provinces overseas, this restraint will have to be a mutual action, that, while they already of themselves know that in the need imposed by high prices the price-limits cannot be exceeded, at the time of retailing such a reckoning of places and bargainings and of the whole transaction be figured out, that under it there is manifestly a fair agreement that those who transport the goods shall nowhere sell at an unduly high price.

“14. Because, therefore, it is an established fact that among our ancestors also the methods employed in new enactments was that boldness be curbed by a prescribed penalty—since very rarely is a status found for men which will benefit them with their free consent, but it is always fear, justest teacher of duties, which will restrain and guide them in the right path—it is our pleasure that if anyone have acted with boldness against the letter of this statute, he shall be subjected to capital punishment.

“15. And let none think that a hard penalty is set, though when the time comes the observance of moderation will be a refuge for averting the peril.

“16. He also shall be subject to the same peril, who in eagerness to purchase has come to an agreement with an avarice which retails in violation of the statutes.

“17. From such guilt also he too shall not be considered free, who, having goods necessary for food or usage, shall after this regulation have thought that they might be withdrawn from the market; since the penalty ought to be even heavier for him who causes need than for him who makes use of it contrary to the statutes.

“18. We therefore appeal to the devotion of all, that the decision made for the public welfare be observed with generous obedience and due scrupulousness, especially since by such a statute provision is manifestly made not only for the individual states and peoples and provinces, but for the whole world, for whose ruin a few, we learn, have raged exceedingly, whose greed neither length of time nor the riches which they are seen to have desired, have been able to moderate or satisfy.”

Roland Kent notes (p. 45):

After the preamble come the price lists arranged in schedules. The prices are fixed in the denarius, no longer a silver coin but one of copper, the value of which at the time of Diocletian was established by the discovery of a fragment of the Edict, in which the price of one Roman pound of refined gold was set at 50,000 denarii; the copper denarius was therefore worth .434 cents. Many of the items in the schedules are for commodities no longer current, and others are preserved in so fragmentary a state that the prices cannot be read. A few of the more interesting items of the various schedules are given below, with the weights, measures and prices changed into United States standards of the present day. [1920] 1

FOOTNOTES

1. Weights were measured in the pondo or libra, the pound, which was equal to .722 lbs. avoirdupois and to .875 lbs. troy; and in the uncia, the ounce, which was one-twelfth of the Roman pound, or .963 oz. avoirdupois and .875 oz. troy.

Lengths were measured by the cubitus, the ell, or 17.46 inches; and by the digitus, the finger, one twenty-fourth of the ell, or .73 inches.

Dry commodities sold in bulk were measured by the Italicus modius, the Italian peck, which equaled 7.95 dry quarts, or almost precisely one peck; the castrensis modius, the military peck, had double the capacity of the Italian peck. The Italicus sextarius, the Italian pint, was one-sixteenth of the Italicus modius, and was therefore a trifling decimal under one dry pint; it was, however, employed mainly for liquids and equaled .578 liquid quarts.

Other goods were sold by the piece, or by number; the size or quality was often specified. The pay of artisans, teachers and lawyers was reckoned by the time or by the services; and the same was true of charges for transportation and the like.

2. It is regrettable that the price of wheat is lost on the record; when it is mentioned at other times in Roman history, it is chiefly in times of scarcity or of over-abundance. Thus in 210 B.C., during the second Punic War, wheat rose to $1.67 per bushel (Polybius, History IX, 45.3), while the poet Martial, in 101 A.D., speaks of a harvest so plentiful that wheat sold at 17 cents per bushel (Martial, Epigrams, XII, 76). But the real interest in these prices is not in their absolute value, but in their relation to wages paid at that time.

3. Many of these workers seem poorly paid in relation to the price of food, but we should note that most of them are furnished with their meals by the employer.

* The English text is taken from the distinguished essay entitled “The Edict of Diocletian Fixing Maximum Prices” by Roland G. Kent which was published in The University of Pennsylvania Law Review for 1920 (pp. 35–47). Professor Kent included an explanatory note giving credit for the joint authorship which is reproduced here. “In French and in German,” he wrote, “there exist, apparently, no translations, but only some much-abridged summaries; in English there is a translation by Professor Rolfe, of the University of Pennsylvania, and Professor Tarbell, of the University of Chicago, presented with much hesitancy on their part, and running only to the middle of the eleventh sentence, where the Plataean fragment which they were editing comes to an end. In presenting herewith a complete translation of the preamble, therefore, the author is moved by the desirability of having it accessible to students in an English form, and he is not unaware of his own temerity in attempting the task; but he is reassured by the kindness of Professor Rolfe, who has consented to the use of his and Tarbell’s translation, so far as it goes, with such verbal changes as the present writer cares to make.”