In this second part, we continue our journey 1,700 years back to the Roman Empire, when Emperor Diocletian tried to curb inflation and, to that end, enacted the Edict on Maximum Prices in AD 301.

This is a long eight-part episode covering the three hundred years of the Early Roman Empire, also known as the Principate. Through this series, we will learn in detail how the Roman State operated during this time and how, as public expenses rose and sources of revenue declined, debasement and inflation followed.

In the previous and first part, we saw in detail the Cura Annonae, the state-sponsored free food distribution program. In this second part today, we will talk about the expenditure on public games, the ludi. We will explore the types and examples of both public festivals and the public games they were associated with, the infrastructure the empire built to provide such spectacles, and the cost this all represented to the imperial coffers. As a general trend, we will see how the ludi increased in number and degree of lavishness.

In the third part, we will discuss two other imperial expenses: handouts as gifts in cash and public construction works. In the fourth episode, we continue exploring the remaining expenditure items: the state bureaucracy and the largest expense of all, the military. In the fifth part, we will touch on whether the Roman Empire could finance these public expenses through public debt and whether the empire lost or gained money through trade. We will also talk about the short-term or unpredictable sources of revenue to cover these expenses. I am referring to mining, the spoils of war, and confiscations from the wealthy elite. Later, in the sixth and seventh parts, we will see the subjects of taxes and treasuries, respectively, as they were long-term or more predictable sources of revenue. Finally, in the eighth and last part, we will talk about debasement, inflation, Diocletian’s Edict on Maximum Prices, and why it failed.

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