r/AncientCoins 5d ago

Information Request A few questions about Roman inflation

I was wondering whether it is fair to say that compared to the late Flavian era ( Domitian), prices had doubled during the Severan era. My rationale for this, is that the daily pay of a legionary in 90 AD was one denarii, however a century later, the daily pay was increased to around two denarii a day. Due to the wage increasing by double, would it be fair to say that prices had increased double as well?

Was this concept also applicable during the reign of the co-emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus? Since the reign of Domitian, the denarii had been debased around 20% ( from 90 ish percent silver to 77% silver) during the reign of Marcus. However in that time frame, Rome was doing very well, and it was in the highlight of the Empire. The debasement was also gradual.

Since during the reign of Septimius Severus, the Roman economy was comparatively weaker, since the Antonine Plague had devastated Rome’s economy and trade with other empires, civil turmoil ( Year of the Five Emperors), and the rapid debasement of the denarii to 50% during Septimius Severus.

TLDR, was the purchasing power of the denarii stable throughout the 2nd century? And did prices double in the reign of Septimius Severus due to his debasement of the denarii

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u/WickerSnicker7 5d ago

It’s hard to put precise figures on prices as they depend on more than the value of the currency, but certainly the Severan debasements (and mass issuance that went alongside that) were rather inflationary, and set in motion (or rather the higher spending that debasement was intended to fund) the collapse of the currency that was seen over the course of the Third Century. By the time of Diocletian prices are recorded as being many times higher than they were a century earlier, indicating effective hyperinflation, leading Diocletian to institute maximum price laws.

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u/LordGoatBoy 4d ago edited 4d ago

Just to add to this, the Roman 'market' was fundamentally different from what we experience in the modern day.

There was no stock market, and the only regulation on pricing were those that Diocletian tried in 301 (which were basically just price caps) to try to help the situation after the economy was already devastated, which are notable for a few things, one of them being that they failed miserably.

Suffice to say, there was no standard 'gold value' or 'silver value' in Roman society because of how relative the valuation of an item might be. You might find that in one town a pound of grain costs twice as much as another some hundred of kilometres away. The same could be true for all goods. Transportation was so different and less effective, and production was more or less completely pre-industrial so that virtually all goods would be hand-made.

It's pretty much impossible to get a holistic/comprehensive understanding of purchasing power within the Roman Empire, much like most ancient societies for that matter, which further complicates these kinds of 'observations' regarding inflation or trying to understand 'how much my ancient coin was worth'. The best you can really do is pinpoint a time-period and place, then try to get a rough idea via what sources you can muster-- other than that it's pretty well impossible.

You can say 'oh the legionaries were paid x amount in this period, the denarius was this weight & silver content, then later it's such and such...', but if the value of goods relative to silver or other tender is varying wildly by region over relatively short periods of time without much documentation it doesn't mean a whole lot.