# How much is a million sesterces in 2015 dollars?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-is-a-million-sesterces-in-2015-dollars/724632>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 9, 2015, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-is-a-million-sesterces-in-2015-dollars/724632 "2015-07-09T02:13:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\
**Post date:** [July 31, 2015, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-is-a-million-sesterces-in-2015-dollars/724632/41 "2015-07-31T18:43:10Z")

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> [@FasterThanMeerkats](#):
>
> Ok, FTR, I did read your entire post and really appreciate the thought you put into it. I guess I feel the approaches that you proposed by rephrasing questions still provide ways to triangulate reasonable answers.
> 
> Saying that this question is unanswerable almost seems to in a sideways manner state that any attempt to analyze the past in relation to the present is completely futile, which also doesn’t feel right. Even questions like “what % of individuals could do X” or “how much was spent on war vs. peace” are meaningless and unanswerable (or at least the answers are incomprehensible) if we accept that the entire historic economic system is completely alien to the present.

I hope I clarified that there _are_ legitimate historical questions, at least if the data were available.

But a straight monetary conversion isn’t one of them.

> [@](#):
>
> Furthermore, if we can answer the question of what is the current value of XX amount of Italian currency from 5, 10, 20, 30, 100, 200 years ago, at what point does the question become unanswerable?

We should become uncomfortable with price comparisons fairly quickly. With a modern economy, 10 or 20 years out will lead to the furrowing of my brow. But at least the geometry is going to mostly line up. It’s recognizably the same world, not yet another planet. 50 years will have me shaking my head, and 100 years is right out. The distortions build up over time until nothing sensible is left. There are economists who find even year-to-year comparisons somewhat distasteful, and while I don’t go that far (and would guess the majority of economists don’t either), their discomfort has a solid basis. Inflation is a tricky thing, much more so than people realize.

> [@](#):
>
> That said, it’s very possible the probabilistic range of answers to the OP’s question is so large as to not be very helpful. In that sense, maybe we are just saying the same thing in different words.

If you still think a probabilistic range might be helpful, then I’d be negligent to not mention the [Measuring Worth](http://www.measuringworth.com/) website. That doesn’t answer the OP’s question about Rome but it does give another perspective on how hard the question is.

You can go to the “Relative Values US $” in the left sidebar, then in the open fields put in, for example, 1 dollar starting at 1800 for an initial year and compare to 2014. You’ll get a “range” of sorts, one whose upper bound is more than three orders of magnitude larger than the lower bound, based on different ways of comparing over time. But I would say, again, that the range itself isn’t useful or meaningful. What can be useful is the nature of the individual subquestions. The CPI comparison is trash, but some of the others are interesting information. They work because they narrow the scope of the question, and in so doing provide a deeper idea than just a basic currency conversion over time.

But of course, that website provides figures for modern countries. Data for ancient Rome’s interesting subquestions is going to be much tougher to come by.

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