How Much did a Tunic Cost in the Roman Empire?

Back in 2017 I posted some information on the price of cloth and clothing in western Europe in 1500 and compared it to Eve Fisher’s modern calculations based on her and her friends’ skill at spinning, weaving, and sewing. I just realized that we can do similarly for the Roman empire in the year 301 CE thanks to the late Veronika Gervers.

Gervers turned to the Edict of Maximum Prices by emperor Diocletian. This text, preserved as many fragmentary inscriptions, tried to set maximum prices and wages for all kinds of goods and services to check inflation. Although it was widely circulated, it is not clear that it had an impact on actual behaviour. No ancient or medieval government had the power of a totalitarian state out of the 20th century, however much they blustered and murdered. The prices in the edict are ones proscribed by bureaucrats at court, not describing prices at any one place or time, and we do not know what assumptions those bureaucrats made. Last time I dove into this text and did some back-of-the-envelope calculations, I got a suspicion that the grain prices might be ‘maximum price just before harvest after a bad year’ where some other prices might be more of a ‘fair average’. But the edict is still a better place to start than our clumsy attempts to copy people who spun and wove every day. Those Roman bureaucrats had at least watched people spinning and weaving and sewing who had practiced their crafts since childhood.

In the Edict, the simplest linen tunic could be sold for up to 500 denarii, whereas a linen weaver was to be paid 20 or 40 denarii per day plus maintenance. Fine linen tunics could be sold for up to 7,000 denarii. Elsewhere in the Edict, workers without maintenance (food and possibly fuel and shelter) earn about twice as much as those with. So a linen weaver would need to work for (500 / 2×40 to 500 / 2×20) 6 to 12 days to earn the price of the simplest linen tunic. That is not so different from the 3 to 10 days’ income for a worker to buy a shirt at the court of Henry VIII of England, considering that the ancients did not have spinning wheels. The linen tunics in 301 CE were probably woven as one rectangular or cross-shaped piece and sewed up the sides and under the arms, whereas the English shirts were cut and sewed from long pieces of cloth, but that is another story.

Clothes were precious before the 20th century. Robbers in Italy or debt collectors in Egypt often stripped the clothes off their victims’ backs, and executioners often claimed the clothes that their clients wore to the execution. So I’m glad that Bret Devereaux and Eve Fisher are trying to communicate that, even though I prefer looking up prices to elaborate calculations!

Edit 2021-05-09: hi Hacker News! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27097945

Edit 2022-01-27: hi Hacker News! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30101404 I have fixed my paypal.me link to point to the Canadian paypal I have easier access to at the moment.

Help keep my finances from unravelling with a monthly donation on Patreon or paypal.me or even liberapay

Further Reading: Veronika Gervers, “Medieval Garments in the Mediterranean World.” In N.B. Harte and K.G. Ponting (eds.), Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe. Pasold Studies in Textile History 2 (London: Heinemann, 1983) pp. 279-315 especially pp. 285-295

Elizabeth Wayland Barber, Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years (W.W. Norton, 1996)

Edit 2024-01-20: for the kind of research which I don’t believe see Marianne Vedeler and Lena Hammarlund, “Reconstructing the Tunic from Lendbreen in Norway,” Archaeological Textiles Review, No. 59, pp. 24-32 where untrained moderns working part-time need 804 hours of labour to make a sleeved tunic starting with the raw wool (also, they count spinning as full-time work, whereas its the model of work that you can do while your eyes are busy with something else)

Edit 2023-07-03: Tracy P. Hudson, “Variables and Assumptions in Modern Interpretation of Ancient Spinning Technique and Technology Through Archaeological Experimentation,” EXARC Journal Issue 2014/1 (2014-02-15) https://exarc.net/ark:/88735/10147

while archaeological experiments exploring ancient textile tools are extremely important to the understanding of textile production in ancient societies, caution must be exercised in drawing conclusions from such experiments. … Observation of living handspinning communities, with textile tools in productive contexts, could be incorporated as an aid to archaeological experimentation. Certain points of practice are known only to practitioners and those who live in textile producing communities will bring a different perspective than craftspeople unconnected to a certain tradition.

Edit 2023-06-18: someday I would like to blog about Nonius Datus, the engineer who was stripped naked by robbers travelling to survey a tunnel in North Africa and left an inscription in 152 CE (CIL VII.2728 and 18122 : Profectus sum et inter uias latrones sum passus ; nudus saucius euasi cum meis): Seragina Cuomo, “A Roman Engineer’s Tales,” The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 101 (2011), pp. 143-165 ; Lassère Jean-Marie, Griffe Michel. “Inscription de Nonius Datus (C.I.L. VII 2728 et 18122, I.L.S. 5795).” Vita Latina, N°145 (1997) pp. 11-17 DOI : https://doi.org/10.3406/vita.1997.1469 Apparently a team in Norway has been repeating a high estimate for the labour required to make the Lendbreen tunic from Norway from around 300 CE: https://piped.video/watch?v=15IxF53AZfE&t=11s or https://youtube.com/watch?v=15IxF53AZfE&t=11s On the tunic see Marianne Vedeler and Lise Bender Jørgensen, “Out of the Norwegian glaciers: Lendbreen—a tunic from the early first millennium AD,” Antiquity 87 (2013) pp. 788-801 https://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/087/ant0870788.htm

Edit 2023-07-21: Crumlin-Pedersen, Ole / Trakedas, Athena (eds.), Hjortspring: A Pre-Roman Iron-Age Warship in Context. Ships and Boats of the North, Volume 5 (The Viking Ship Museum: Roskilde, DK, 2003) talks about the problem of using inexperienced, young or old paddlers to understand the potential performance of a long boat crewed by fit, experienced paddlers and how a team of experienced dragonboat paddlers could paddle their replica Hjortspring boat much faster than the Hjortspring Association could.

(scheduled 23 March 2021)