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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 1554259, member: 19463&quot;]The standard text on this for Roman is usually <font face="arial"><b>Coinage in the Roman Economy, 300 B.C. to A.D. 700</b> by Kenneth Harl.&nbsp; It covers the wide range a bit unevenly because there are periods for which we lack evidence on the most simple questions.&nbsp; Regarding the Money of Account matter mentioned by Doug: There was an issue by Licinius I where he placed the value of the coin in denarii of account on the reverse of the coin.&nbsp; The occasion was a revaluation of coinage making the previous 25 denarii coins now worth 12 1/2 so the new coins were marked XIIs (where the s is a squiggle some people see as a gamma but it was the symbol for semisis or half).&nbsp; I&#039;m away from home and my copy so I can&#039;t quote what Harl had to say about purchasing power under Constantine but I can tell you that the time between 307 and 337 AD saw many changes in the matter so your question would be hard to answer.&nbsp; Consider also that the Empire had the same situation we have today where I can buy gasoline for $3.59 and a nice house for $250,000 but someone reading this has trouble finding gas for under $5 or a house for under a million.&nbsp;&nbsp; In my lifetime (roughly the span of Diocletian to Julian II) I have seen gas under 20 cents and houses for $5k so we should not be too exacting on the question of what could you buy with this AE3 unless we realize there will be footnotes longer than the answer.</font>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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