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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Juan Blanco, post: 1570908, member: 41665&quot;]<u>Confirmed:</u></p><p>My caloric weight estimate (for a smaller Aramaic Greek-Jewish male engaged in heavy work) off a USDA calculator <b>matches </b>Leland Allbaugh&#039;s work on Krete with Greeks (in the late 1940s) :<b> 2,400 cal/day. </b></p><p><a href="http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft6g50071w&amp;chunk.id=d0e6381&amp;toc.depth=1&amp;brand=ucpress" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft6g50071w&amp;chunk.id=d0e6381&amp;toc.depth=1&amp;brand=ucpress" rel="nofollow">http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft6g50071w&amp;chunk.id=d0e6381&amp;toc.depth=1&amp;brand=ucpress</a></p><p><br /></p><p>As&nbsp; cited in that link, the standard ration of 1 chœnix per day was no&nbsp; starvation diet. It was MORE than someone would consume.&nbsp; Why? I believe&nbsp; that worker&#039;s Wheat-allotment was (partly) currency, too.&nbsp; And when Wheat was scarce, what substituted? Where did &#039;more money&#039; come from?</p><p><br /></p><p><u>Hypothetical:</u></p><p>A&nbsp; &#039;chœnix per day&#039; might have been given in Asses instead. In times of&nbsp; normal famine, the <i>wholesale Wheat Price </i>rose, let&#039;s say, from 5&nbsp; Asses per modius* (good harvest, September) to 16 Asses (harsh Winter, February.)&nbsp;&nbsp; In the extreme situation where Price Controls were so necessary (after several years of inflation&quot; to be engraved in stone) the speculator&#039;s wholesale price likely rose to 24-32&nbsp; Asses per modius. This allows for a BoR 6:6 retail price of 16 Asses (1&nbsp; denarius) per chœnix, whereas the expected <i>retail </i>Wheat Price in a harsh winter would have been just 8 Asses.</p><p><br /></p><p>*in the time of Martial, say A. D. 100, corn was 4 <i>sestertii </i>(8 Asses) the modius at retail; considered so cheap the Spanish farmer might consume it himself (Ep. XII, 76, 12)</p><p><br /></p><p><font size="1">From <u>Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries: From Paul to Valentinus</u> Peter Lampe p.194</font></p><p><br /></p><p>At the destruction of Jerusalem (AD 70) Flavius Josephus reported &quot;...a measure of wheat had been sold for a talent of Silver...&quot; The dry-measurement for an <i>ephah </i>is about 36.4 litres, so about 1 bushel (USA= 60 lbs. avd; 27.22 kgs) and a common heavy talent of Silver in C.E. was 58.9 kilograms. That&#039;s 2.16 kgs Ag per kilogram of Wheat. Surely, a record price.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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