How much is a Denarii worth?

**Medieval Assassin** · 10-17-2004, 16:57

In shogun a Koku was equal to the ammount of rice one man would eat in a year,
Whats a denarii worth? On how many denarris could a avg.man, with an avg. job, live a avg. year?

**Spartiate** · 10-17-2004, 19:13

Good question assassin.I believe originally it was equal to the value of 10 donkeys and later to 16 donkeys but that could be for a DENARIUS(daily wage of a laborer).I know that SALARY comes from the Roman custom of having an allowance for salt as part of their wages.
Sorry i don't know is a better answer.

**Spartiate** · 10-17-2004, 19:16

Actually check here: http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/denarius

**Sinner** · 10-17-2004, 19:34

Here's another good site: http://dougsmith.ancients.info/worth.html.

Assumng my math is correct it was around 25 days of bread for one denarii in the early Republic.

Oh, and a denarii could also get you 2 life stories...

**Spartiate** · 10-17-2004, 19:35

We could do with that sort of inflation these days.

**Hurin_Rules** · 10-17-2004, 19:50

10 or 16 asses does not mean donkeys. An 'as' is also a coin, no an animal. 10 donkeys would cost you more than one denarius. I suspect a donkey would probably go for a few denarii.

**Spartiate** · 10-17-2004, 19:54

I assume you are right as Denarii also meant "of 10" so "as" deing a coin would make sense then.However on the first site i was on it clearly said donkey instead of ass.It wasn't just my translation.

**Hurin_Rules** · 10-17-2004, 19:57

**Grifman** · 10-17-2004, 21:26

A denarius was about a day's wage for the average laborer, at least by the time of Christ.

Grifman

**vodkafire** · 10-17-2004, 22:18

wow, donkeys are cheap back then. But i think the game should have used TALENTS(150 pounds of gold i think) instead, which is more appropriate to the economic scale of the game.

**Scorpion** · 10-18-2004, 02:22

A legionary´s pay was 112,5 denari per year before Caesar (after which it was doubled).

If we go with Caesar´s figure, and assume that in the game a legionary (a hastati) is paid a bit over 1 denari every half a year, 2 denari in the game would correspond with Caesar´s 225 denari in the real life.

Of course, this is assuming that the legionary doesn´t incur any additional costs having to do with his upkeep at all for the empire....

Basically, you can think that each "denari" in the game represents 100 denari.

**lars573** · 10-18-2004, 04:17

A denarii was a silver penny. I can across that little tidbit when reading about Charlemagne he reintroduced coinage see and it was the old roman denarii, and it was labelled as I have labeled it.