by Peter Edwell
The Conversation
Therefore, who would not know that effrontery hijacks the public interest? […] It ratchets up the prices of things for sale, not fourfold or eightfold but so much that the human tongue’s reckoning cannot untangle what to call the accounting and the deed!
The language is different but this edict on maximum prices, issued in 301 CE by Roman emperor Diocletian, reflects a feeling familiar to many: why is everything so expensive lately?
Diocletian’s edict highlights the deep outrage he and and his imperial colleagues felt at the rampant inflation that had engulfed the Roman empire for much of the third century.
Inflation eroded the pay of the soldiers whose loyalty was the basis of the emperors’ authority.
So, how did the Roman Empire get into this mess – and how did it get out of it?