Legionary pay in modern money

[FlaviusCrispus]

I think that essentially, we can not convert ancient prices and wages into modern currency. The reason is that the subsystems of the modern economy are better integrated. Two examples.

Of course you're correct that we cant draw an exact comparison, since the ancient world economy was so drastically different than ours. In the ancient economy, LABOR (particularly slave labor) was extremely cheap, while MATERIALS (particularly metals) were expensive. In today's world, it's the exact opposite.

But people always seek to draw comparisons, and for a simple, rough rule of thumb, pegging the ancient monetary system to an everyday commodity like bread is probably as close as we can come.

Whenever someone asks me "what's that in today's money," I always explain that direct comparison is difficult if not impossible, but since leaving it at that is distinctly unsatisfying, I'll add a rough estimate based either on wages ("a denarius a day is an average wage for a skilled workman, a nobleman needs to have property worth a million sesterces to enter the Senate") or prices ("a dupondius will buy a loaf of bread, an as will buy a cup of cheap wine," etc.).

It is interesting that using the "bread gradiant" produces wages, at the low end of the scale, that aren't too different from those of equivalent positions in the modern world (an annual salary of $6,000 for a U.S. Private was about right up until the 1970s), although at the upper range (Primus Pilus), a modern General would have to retire and parlay his position into a CEO job at a major firm to make that kind of moolah.

(Love the Rumsfeld "poem," by the way.)