Good luck with this. It sounds like it could be very useful to understanding the Roman economy better.
Warmly,
Jay Raskin
DCHindley wrote:In attempts to illustrate the inflation in prices that occurred in the 3rd century CE, everyone is busy making assertions about a denarius being able to buy so many pounds, quarts, pecks or bushels of wheat, but these equations are all very loose, not always being clear whether these are supposed to be Roman, Greek or modern measures, or citing their sources for the equations.
What I am finding is that these loose or imprecise equations occur even in academic articles, often making sweeping generalizations based on isolated regional data. The problem is that there are only a handful of ancient sources citing commodity prices, spread out over the wide geographical area controlled by the Roman empire, rarely citing the standard of the coin being referenced...
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I have identified some of the sources he may have used for these money to value equations, which I am in the process of organizing and will present later.
Unfortunately, Stefan has gone on to pursue other things that do not relate to ancient history, and I cannot find a copy of his program available online. I thought I had a copy of the self-extracting zip file that installs and sets up the program, but cannot find it on my current hard drive. I might be able to find it on one of several old disembodied HDDs in my desk drawers.
DCH
