Talk:Res Gestae Divi Augusti

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untitled[edit]

Should this move to List of Latin phrases? Jwrosenzweig 17:22, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

No, it is actually an inscription (well, a whole bunch of inscriptions) praising Augustus' deeds as emperor. It just needs to be expanded. Adam Bishop 17:24, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It needs to be expanded to remain an article on its own. I hope it is. - Tεx τ urε 17:27, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Done :) Adam Bishop 17:40, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Excellent. :) Sorry for being initially interested in moving it, the stub didn't really explain the phrase's significance. Bravo for the expansion! Jwrosenzweig 17:47, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Money values[edit]

I have read that, in augustus's time, a denarius had the proportional value to 25 dollars, not 0.3 dollars. In terms of labour prices, 600 million denarius would be valued today as 100 billion dollars not only 200 million!--RafaelG 19:30, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, where did you read that? Adam Bishop 00:36, 12 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In the early 1th century, a unskilled worker had a daily wage of 1 denarius, compared to 180 dollars in america today. Also, a single denarius was estimated to have a PPP proportional to about 25 today's dollars, so 200 million dollars is an absurd low value to that quantity of money. --RafaelG 17:33, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are lots of comparisons with present-day money and ancient money values. It ius really impracticle to make precise comparisons, as they are so far removed from one another. Bensonby 17:48, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is impossible to accurately compare the purchasing power of an ancient currency, like the denarii, to the US dollar. Historians have attempted to correlate value by comparing the purchasing power of commodities, food, or army pay, but this is problematic. For instance, you can compare the amount a legionary got paid, and then compare this to a non commissioned soldier in the US army and his pay. But then when you compare what bread costs then to the cost now to try and figure out the purchasing power of a coin, it doesn't correlate correctly relative with the soldiers pay. When the texts talk of actual silver or gold at a specific weight it’s a little easier to grasp, but still we don’t know what was paid for a lot of things. So the numbers can be quite different. Unfortunately there’s not a lot of talk about purchasing power of various currencies in the ancient texts. We don’t even know the name of many of the denominations used in the Roman Empire let alone their purchasing power relative to the US Dollar! In any case, we can all certainly agree that Augustus, when emperor, had the means to acquire more wealth than any man alive at the time. Odin1 (talk) 14:05, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I just tagged the current value as dubious. Do unskilled laborers really make $180 dollars a day (I know I never have)? In any event, we should get a source for the conversion ratio or cut it out entirely. The idea that it's a large amount of money is conveyed by the context whether we say it equals 10 or 100 billion USD. Eluchil404 (talk) 05:15, 16 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Attempting to convert between even ca. 1800 monetary values and ca. 2000 monetary values is rather dubious at best, since at that time the cost of labor was relatively much cheaper, and many things we take for granted as part of our lives today could not then be bought at any price. And of course, all these problems are much more severe for 2000 years ago than 200 years ago (since in ancient times the nature of the economy was even more different from today's, and we possess less detailed information). However, the wording of the statement in the article is "parity of purchasing power of labour" (apparently attempting to avoid some of the many problems connected with attempts at finding general currency equivalence ratios). AnonMoos (talk) 12:34, 16 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

According to the Wikipedia article on the value of the denarius under Augustus, about 1/10 of a Troy Ounce of silver was present in each coin. At current market value, compared to the US dollar, 600 million denarius would be about 1.375 Billion US Dollars. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.122.178.131 (talk) 17:00, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep in mind that silver, relative to gold, was worth quite a bit more relative to gold in ancient times. When the Spanish started digging up mountains of it in the New World, its value decreased several times over, and that's only relative to gold... As for purchasing power parity... When's the last time any of you bought a slave? There's really no comparing an ancient economy to a modern one. Not even in terms of commodities. Back then, 90% of people were employed in agriculture because that's how many people it took to feed everyone; today that number's in the single digits and we're still fatter than the average Roman ever was. On the other hand, I'm sure that if we built six story apartment buildings the Roman way, without plumbing or electricity or gas, and out of nothing but bricks, concrete and wood, it'd be much cheaper... but then, our building codes would never allow us to build structures that were already considered death traps 2000 years ago. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.24.78.171 (talk) 16:26, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Structure of the Text[edit]

Hi, I am going to reformat this section. It is pretty brutal. I mean this sentance.... "The text consists of 35 paragraphs that are conventionally grouped in four sections,[1] and a short introduction and post-mortem appendix." Adrianturcato (talk) 02:04, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]