Faced With Inflation, Diocletian Capped Prices Which Didn’t Prevent the Roman Empire From Collapsing

The fall of the Roman Empire was already unstoppable.

Mark Twain once said:

“History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.”

At a time when America's public debt has just exceeded $35T, and is speeding towards $40T, some of the collapses of dominant empires of the past should serve as lessons for the politicians at the head of this flawed and not fixable system.

The following is a reminder of how hyperinflation brought down the Roman Empire. A reminder that no empire, however strong it may appear, can last forever.

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“We have decided, as the whole human race seems to be begging us to do, to fix not the price of goods but a maximum so that, if any surge in prices should occur (which God forbid), greed, which like fields stretched to infinity cannot be contained, may be curbed by the limits of our decree or by the bounds of a moderating law...”

Between November 20 and December 9, 301, from the East where he was then, the Roman emperor Diocletian imposed a maximum price for more than a thousand products.

These products included cereals, meat, wine, beer, lentils, and sausages, but also shoes, coats, transport costs, sea travel, salaries, and fees for independent professionals. The imperial edict specified that those who exceeded these ceilings or who stockpiled goods to raise their prices would be punished by death.

The objective of this measure was to fight against the galloping inflation that the empire knows since the crisis of the third century …

The Crisis of the Third Century

This crisis began with the troubles caused by the successive assassinations of the emperors Caracalla (217), Heliogabalus (222), and Alexander Severus (235). They highlighted one of the structural weaknesses of the empire: the absence of precise rules of succession.

The power is henceforth at the mercy of generals raised to the imperial purple by their soldiers and also quickly eliminated by a new pretender. Between 235 and 288, Michel De Jaeghere reminds us in his book “The Last Days, the end of the Western Roman Empire”, that no less than 18 emperors succeeded each other in Rome. Most of them die of violent death.