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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2455 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 26, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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One of my little hobbies is examining historical evidence and trying to make a reasonable guess at the truth of things. I thought an example of such might be fun enough for people here, so here you are.

Bret Devereaux writes of Roman weavers:

That said, while the production of clothing was an essential task, it was not a well-remunerated task. Regular weavers – not specialized in rare or fine fabrics – are some of the least well paid individuals in Diocletian’s Price Edict, paid just 12-16 denarii per day (20-40 for those working high quality linen, 25-40 for those working on silk), compared to 25 denarii per day for an unskilled farm laborers, mule drivers, shepherds and 50 or more for skilled artisans working wood, stone or metal (Carpenters: 50; mosaic workers, 60, wall painters (fresco, one assumes): 75, shipwrights, 50-60, blacksmith or baker, 50, etc.).

First, the reason this passage drew my attention: that an at least partially skilled laborer could draw half the wage of a farmhand does not pass the smell test. Why would such individuals not simply up and leave? The farms await with their great bounties. Such a discrepancy demands explanation. Bret attempts one, but his is that capital ownership was much more important in the labor-rich premodern environment, and that therefore the earnings of weavers could be driven down. This explains nothing of the discrepancy between weavers and presumably equally disenfranchised hired hands. So what could account for this?

First, background on Diocletian’s edict. Normally we think of price controls as a minimum cost or wage for this and that, typically as a socialist dictator’s ploy to stay popular. Diocletian was setting a maximum to try and halt inflation. So in each of these, we should consider: given an environment where labor is in a relative position of strength, Diocletian forbids the worker demanding a wage beyond a certain amount. If labor is not strong, and currency is not too greatly debased, then we should expect actual prices to stay lower than these marks, or else for wages to float beyond them on the gray market.

In the edict itself, however, low-grade weavers were not paid by the day, but rather by the pound. This is likely what is generating Bret’s estimate range here, as it’s hard to know exactly how much a weaver can weave. But there’s another confounder here, which is that the edict does not specify the quality of the weaver, but rather the quality of the wool, which is coarse. Wool’s weight per yard is not fixed, but varies on the thickness of the thread - so a weaver using coarse thread is simply going to be producing more pounds per yard and per unit of labor than one using fine thread. Flax is finer than wool, and presumably is going to be priced higher per pound.

And since our estimates on historical productivity are at best sketchy, we really can’t rely on our figures here. Modern estimates are typically given by historical reenactors. Not to put too fine a point on it, these are amateurs and historians who are bookish and unlikely to be either driven or particularly skilled with their hands. Premoderns, on the other hand, were going to eat or starve based on their productivity, and starvation was not so very far away. They would be working hard (perhaps 12h/d instead of 8 max), and with no end to practice, and likely with more dexterity than book learning. We should expect their productivity to be substantially greater than our contemporaries. And, given that we know Diocletian was trying to set reasonable price caps to halt inflation, we can assume that he was working off of estimates to keep the overall income of these similar workers in line. The farmhand shares wages with a water carrier and a mule driver. The equivalent for the wool weaver would be the day-wage linen weaver, who made 20d. That should actually make us strongly suspect that a weaver of coarse wool fabric was making a pound and a third, or a yard and change, of cloth a day, rather than making much less money. (Also interesting: women make much less a day, down to 12d. Was this because women worked slower, because they were expected to work part-time alongside childcare, or because they were understood to be exceptionally vulnerable without a working man and therefore easy to exploit? The wage gap persists.)

Lastly, a couple considerations on the nature of the work. Farmhands are presumably not sharecroppers, but rather hired help during the backbreaking and urgent plowing and harvest seasons. They would not be needed the rest of the year. In contrast, given that thread does not spoil like food, a weaving workshop can operate year-round and would likely prefer to so distribute the work in order to fully utilize workspace and looms. So our farmhand is hired for a few weeks of brutal but reasonably paid work, while our weaver is steadily employed throughout the year. Even though the farmhand likely picks up additional work to cover the gaps, the needed rest after these periods means he is all but certain to average below his sticker price. How much lower is a hard estimate, but 20% of the time out of work is sufficient to bring his wage down to the linen-weaver. And we have to assume that Diocletian was completely aware of this fact.

So, in summary: looking at the actual numbers and the actual purpose of the edict, alongside some reasonable assumptions about the comparable nature of the work and our own limited ability to produce, yields a plausible interpretation of the evidence where the astonishing anomaly of Bret’s assertion that weavers were paid like women (on its own an anomaly) vanishes. And this is a technique, for what it’s worth, that Bret has used himself for things like military equipment weight, so I think he most likely is just less familiar with this field and took someone else’s uncited estimate as gospel instead of examining the strange details like he would for military matters.

If something doesn’t make sense on the roughest estimates, that’s almost always because one premise or another is false or misunderstood. This mutation of syllogistic reasoning holds quite broadly.

Why would such individuals not simply up and leave?

—Having the freedom to change jobs

—In Diocletian’s Rome

Anon, I....

How did this work? What was the gears-level social fabric (heh) that prevented people from changing jobs?

Taxes.

Diocletian is credited with starting the process of tying tenants to their land as part of a combined land/labor tax regime. So it’s technically the opposite.

Fun exercise, but I’m not sure why you’re so dismissive of “amateurs and historians.” Surely they could price in the same factors you’re considering?

A translation of the edict can be found here. You’ll want sections VII, XIX and XX.

I suspect the 12-16d number comes from “women weavers of tunicas,” the only wool worker listed with a daily wage. It’s hard to line up the terminology, but this seems to be a different job than either the linen or wool weavers in the next section.

Wool weavers are paid 15d/lb for the lowest quality fiber. If the weights and times further down the page are remotely accurate, that pound is closer to a week’s work than a day’s. Maybe it doesn’t include spinning? But that raises its own set of questions.

I’m dismissing their physical abilities.

I’m surprised you quoted XX when XXI is pretty clearly what he’s referencing.

Okay, but what makes you think the historians didn’t account for that already?

And you’re right; XXI has the weavers. XX has the “woman weavers of tunicas”.

Diocletian’s Price Edict

Fun fact: One well-regarded Dungeons & Dragons offshoot, ACKS (the Adventurer Conqueror King System), uses this document as a basis for some of its economics.

How ACKS Prices Were Set

To correctly set the relational price of any given good or service in ACKS, we needed a historical price for the good, and the historical price for wheat, extracted from the same time and place. Otherwise we'd just have Cargo Cult prices [as in D&D and other offshoots of it].

Fortunately, while developing ACKS II, we were able to find an English translation of all of the known fragments of the Edictum de Pretiis Rerum Venalium, better known as the Edict on Maximum Prices. Issued in 301 AD by Emperor Diocletian, the Edict sets the maximum price for hundreds of goods and services in denarii.

What makes the Edict so useful for ACKS is that it is set in the time period that the Auran Empire campaign emulates, Late Antiquity. By knowing how much a Diocletian denarius was worth in ACKS, we were able to use the Edict to establish historical prices for the huge number of goods and services that it covers. Since ACKS prices were benchmarked against wheat, where 1 quarter of wheat costs 4 GP [gold pieces], we were able to use the price of wheat in the Edict to work out the value of the denarii.

The Edict tells us that 1 modius kastrensis (“k. mod.”) of wheat sold for 100 denarii. The modius is a unit of dry measure equivalent to 8.73 liters. The modius kastrensis is equal to 1.5 modii, hence 12.93 liters. 12.93 liters of wheat weighs 22.15 lb. Since a quarter of wheat is 480 lb, there are (480/22.15 =) 21.67 k. mod. per quarter. Therefore the price of a quarter of wheat, under the Edict, is (100 denarii / k. mod.) × (21.67 k. mod. / quarter) = 2166.33 denarii. We have established that 1 quarter of wheat is worth 4 GP. Therefore 4 GP/quarter = 2166 denarii/quarter; and 1 GP = 541.58 denarii.

With this conversion rate established, we are able to establish wheat-relative prices for all the various goods and services extracted from the Edict and convert them into denominations of GP, SP, and CP. However, as we did so, we discovered that just because a price is in the Edict doesn't necessarily mean it's the proper price for ACKS. For one thing, the Edict itself was a price fixing statute, and governments have a long history of getting price controls very wrong. Diocletian might have been—for all we know—as bad at pricing goods and services as the typical RPG. In addition, the very particular conditions means that some prices might be peculiar to that place and time. From time to time, we even encountered prices in the Edict that were mathematically impossible—goods selling for less than their cost of production, for instance. In such cases we have revised the prices based on other research. Finally, we must also note that certain adventuring equipment in ACKS II are simply not priced historically. In particular:

  • While the medium and heavy armors are correctly priced, padded and leather armor are too expensive relative to historical norms. Padded armor should probably be 2–5 GP while leather armor should be no more than 5 GP. For simplicity we standardized at 10 GP = 1 AC = 1 stone.

  • Grappling hooks and other climbing gear do not seem to have been in wide use during Late Antiquity. Their use in naval warfare (with grappling ballistae) is notable enough that the ancient historians go out of their way to mention it. We have retained them in ACKS II, but raised the price to reflect that they are a specialized technology not otherwise in use.

  • Healing herbs with the potent efficacy of those found in ACKS II are simply fantasy. No poultice of comfrey or woundwort had anywhere near the curative power we have assigned them. However, healing herbs with a realistic level of efficacy would have almost no discernable game effect. Therefore we have magnified the efficacy of healing herbs to a playable (albeit fantastical) level, and increased their cost to an ahistorical level to compensate. If verisimilitude is a worry, assume the healing herbs are rare, fragile, and hard-to-find varietals of the real-world herbs.

  • Lanterns of the sort described in the Adventuring Equipment section did not exist in Late Antiquity. However, they probably would have existed in a Late Antiquity in which legionaries had to enter dungeons to fight monsters. Therefore we have included them in the game but at an ahistorical high cost. The same is true for adventurer's harnesses, disguise kits, thieves' tools, and other adventuring equipment. All of these items were well within the capabilities of the ancients.

  • The carts and wagons that existed in Late Antiquity were relatively primitive in the construction of their harnesses, yokes, and wheels. Rather than force adventurers to endlessly deal with broken axles, oxen choking on poor harness[*], and so on, we have included vehicles more appropriate for a later era and raised the price accordingly. You can simulate historical carts and wagons by applying some of the cost reduction and penalties from the scavenged equipment tables.

*A different well-regarded tabletop RPG, GURPS (the Generic Universal Roleplaying System), claims that this is a misconception:

Breast-Strap Harness

TL0

This is a rope or leather harness that wraps around the animal’s chest. Initial research suggested that this and other early harnesses rode up and choked horses wearing them. Recent reconstructions have shown this to be incorrect. The real drawback is that, on horses, these harnesses appear to be inefficient when used to pull plows or drag loads on the ground (again, halve the pulling divisor), as opposed to when pulling wagons.

Another possible error here could be that the weaving the compensation is intended for isn't actually skilled labour.

Basic weaving mass producing basic cloth isn't skilled labour. It's extremely simple and repetitive. You could be shown how to do it in 10 minutes. Furthermore, it's not physically strenuous (unlike the farmwork you describe) or dangerous and you can do it indoors.

Given the above the relative compensation makes sense.

There is weaving that absolutely would count as skilled labour but that is explicitly excluded.

Basic weaving mass producing basic cloth isn't skilled labour. It's extremely simple and repetitive. You could be shown how to do it in 10 minutes. Furthermore, it's not physically strenuous (unlike the farmwork you describe) or dangerous and you can do it indoors.

I also think this is the reason. You can be too frail to work as a farmhand, or lame, or half-blind, but as long as you have two hands not destroyed by arthritis, you can still weave.

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