Gap between poor and rich in the Roman Empire
Upvote:3
In finding reliable resources to answer this question I stumbled upon Author Mayer, Emanuel. The ancient middle classes : urban life and aesthetics in the Roman Empire, 100 BCE-250 CE. It contains a clear understanding of Roman class structure from both a social and economic perspective and it comes with data, which, if used to compare with data about current societies (Piketty's book on Capital in XXI century, for instance) could give you a solid understanding of the difference between the ancient and current social strata.
Upvote:12
It was more. In 2006 Walter Schiedel wrote an interesting working paper on Roman incomes ("New ways of studying incomes in the Roman economy") which you can find on the web. However, Schiedel's paper just scratches the surface.
When Cicero, a very frugal and honest man, ruled as governor of Cilicia, a relatively poor province, he made 2.1 million sesterces, or about 5500 ounces of gold. Today worth about $7 million USD. At this time an ordinary worker might make 10 asses a day, quite a good wage, which would come out to about $3,600 USD in modern gold terms by the same measure. This would be working "middle class" for a Roman. A poor person might have only enough to scrape by, maybe $1,000 USD a year.
Roman patricians would have dozens, if not hundreds, of servants. How many rich people do you know now who have more than 12 servants?
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