I recall reading at several points in Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome novels that in the late Roman Republic, to qualify for the Senate, a man had to have a fortune of at least a million sesterces (and it had to be in the form of a million sesterces worth of land; trade was un-Senatorial). How much is that in modern terms?
If we assume that an ancient horse is pretty equivalent to a modern day car then:
1 horse = 10,000 asses
1 sesterius = 4 asses
1 horse = 2,500 sesterces
If, in modern day, a car is valued at about $25,000, then sesterces are 10x the value of a dollar. 1 million sesterces would be about $10 million.
To clarify, the value of sesterces relative to “asses” refers to their value relative to asses, the smallest unit of Roman currency.
Augustus modified Roman tarriffing so that a sestertius was worth 1/100 of an aureus. An aureus weighed about 8 grams at that time, which would be about $300 at current gold prices. So a sestertius was worth about $3, and our Senate candidate would need $3 million. The tarriff system and the weight of coinage was modified by just about every prior and succeeding government so it’s hard to say what the numbers are for the late Republic.
Of course, any system we use is going to be subject in fluctuations in the Value of Things. If we’d done the same calculation using gold prices in 2000 you’d only have needed $600,000 to qualify.
It has to be a million sesterces’ worth of land – farmland, that is – so how much in acres/hectares?
There is no real answer to this question.
It’s like asking how blue the number six is. People with synesthesia might have a legitimate personal response but that response won’t be broadly applicable.
Let’s back up and imagine a different scenario. Let’s say we’re universe traversing scientists performing ecological experiments on different worlds. We engineer a brand new biological soup from scratch, including a sapient species as part of the mix, and then seed this mixture onto two different planets. Both planets can support life but one has a stupid amount of gold, common as dirt with very little silver; and the other has a stupid amount of silver, common as dirt with very little gold. Other elemental configurations are also very different, meaning the two worlds have different resource limitations. An ecology develops on each planet. The intelligent species adapts to the conditions of each planet. Most important is the local resource limitations.
Now we ask the question: how much is a silver coin on one planet worth, compared to a gold coin on the other?
The problem is that the worth of any particular object is dependent on the conditions in which it being traded. Maybe horse-like creatures find a nice niche on one planet, but go extinct in the other. So how much would a space-horse be worth on the planet that doesn’t have any? There’s no way to compare. The two different planets will have different technologies, different resources, different outcomes, and their respective currencies will be a reflection of the native conditions, not a universal standard with which to judge the currency on a world that doesn’t quite have the same things. There is no trade between the worlds. There is no way for the internal trade within one world to be used as a standard for the other.
The past is a different country. The past is a different planet. We can’t trade with ancient Rome. We have different technologies. We have access to different resources. We can’t use our standards to judge the worth of Roman money, for exactly the same reason that gold on one planet can’t be used to judge the worth of silver on another. There are obviously many things that line up between us and Rome. We might compare horses, or wheat, or heads of cattle, but no matter what standard we try to pick, we’re leaving so much out that the comparison just won’t work.
An individual might state the number six is blue. They’re totally convinced. It’s true to their experience. And you might personally think that given your personal preferences, a gram of gold on one planet has roughly than the same purchasing power as two grams of silver on the other. That would be a legitimate perspective, but there’s nothing in it approaching objectivity. A functioning market isn’t exactly “objective” either, but it’s still got a certain something that an individual human judgment doesn’t. A market is aggregating the experiences of many, conveying genuine information in some deeper manner, even if it doesn’t represent a Platonic ideal. It’s a helpful tool.
We don’t have that tool when we compare the present to the past.
Tell me more about these space-horses.
Darn. I was picturing something more like this.
Then perhaps a question that might yield a more useful answer would be “what percentage of Romans possessed sufficient wealth to qualify for the Senate?”
Pliny the Younger’s fortune was valued at 20 million sesterces, which made him one of the 20 richest men in Rome. In case you’re wondering, we know this because Pliny spent a lot of time telling everyone he was not one of the richest men in Rome, which “only” 17 million sesterces in land. If we use modern wealth distribution as a guide, that probably means there were a few thousand men who were wealth-qualified.
However, it was basically only gentleman farmers who were allowed to sit in the Senate; the Romans considered trade and lending to be dishonorable professions (or at least not honorable enough for the Senate) because traders and financiers did not “produce” anything of value. That’s why the requirement was for 1 million sesterces in land value.
It’s entirely possible that there were barely any more men eligible to sit in the Senate than there were seats (300).
ETA: this source says the average senator was worth 2.5 million sesterces.
Well, a Sestertius supposedly contained 2.5 grams of silver. That would be 1.25 at todays prices. Since they were often underweight, you can easily say 1 Sestertius = 1 USD.
Or say a Million bucks- in land. Farms, apartments, etc.
Looking at it another way the male citizens of the late Roman Republic might have numbers 500000. 300 were senators, make that the top .1%.
Today the Top 1% is just about $800K, but the top .1% is $27 Million. Most of that is stocks, bonds, etc, so let us say $5MM in investment land.
Those numbers come pretty close.
The Roman Republic existed from 509 BC to 27 BC. Is that the period you’re talking about? If you’re actually talking about the empire later, then please clarify.
Augustus ruled after the Roman Republic ended. So these values are useless if the OP was indeed talking about the Republic.
Pliny the Younger didn’t live during the Roman Republic, rather he lived between 61 AD and 113 AD.
The Sestertius of the Roman Republic indeed contained some silver. The later sestertii were bronze and brass containing no silver. We need some clarification about the time period about which the OP refers.
Good point.
The Masters of Rome Series ends with the End of the Republic. So, we can confidently say “Late Republic”. It spans the years 110BC to 27BC. Of course there’s some debate as to the actual end of the Republic, ranging from 42BC to indeed 27BC.
Beautiful.
You could do some calculations based on values from Pompeii in 79 A.D.
loaf of bread = half a sestertius
half liter of wine= half to one sestertius
6.67 kg wheat = 7 sestertii
a bucket = 2 sestertii
Too late. 79 AD is long after the Republic ended.
As I pointed out in the post you quoted, “[t]he tarriff system and the weight of coinage was modified by just about every prior and succeeding government so it’s hard to say what the numbers are for the late Republic.”
If you have better numbers, feel free to share.
With prices like that no wonder there was so much debauchery going on back then.
But not helpful.
I’m talking about the late Republic, the time of Marius and Sulla and Julius Caesar. Qualifications for the Senate varied over the lifetime of the Republic, of course.