Prices In the Roman World

F.B.J. Heinrich & M. Hondelink, Tijdschrift voor Mediterrane Archeologie, 56 (2017) 22-31.

This paper aims to assess the accessibility of pepper to average Roman consumers in terms of price by quantifying
the cost of ‘meaningful’ culinary pepper consumption. To this end, by performing measurements on modern pepper
samples, we first quantify Roman pepper prices and units of measurement more concretely. What was the cost of a
peppercorn, and how many were there to the libra and other units? We then define and quantify ‘meaningful’ pepper
consumption using modern consumption statistics and cooking data. Subsequently we compare these data to Roman
incomes. We show that, if only looking at price, regular culinary pepper consumption would even have been possible
for lower income consumers.
In addition, we also used our method to quantify the value of amounts of pepper in literary sources and archaeological
finds. We look in more detail at Apicius’ De Re Coquinaria, which features many recipes with infeasibly high
quantities of pepper. We show that in most recipes where the amount of pepper is explicitly quantified and large, whole
peppercorns instead of ground pepper was used. We show that this excessive yet inefficient usage of pepper as ‘garnish’
is a form of conspicuous consumption. We argue this may be a response to normal, efficient pepper use, becoming too
commonplace and not distinctive enough for elites. We also explore the price difference between the different types of
pepper the Romans consumed. We explain these differences from the perspective of production cost through assessing
traditional production processes and agronomic statistics.