# The Edict on Maximum Prices threatens death for exceeding ceilings, a coercive market police

Date: 301

## The fact

In 301 the tetrarchy issued the Edict on Maximum Prices, a long tariff of goods, wages, and freight, with capital threats against sellers who exceeded ceilings. Fragments survive on stone. [Diocletian](/people/diocletian)’s government is the heading.

It is one event.

## Context

Inflation was real. Death for a loaf-price is still coercive. The edict failed as a market machine, as later historians agree, and could punish the poor seller as well as the speculator.

Diocletian’s documented role is bounded by other offices and collaborators named in the sources below. Sharing a field with them is not a reason to drop a documented act, and it is not a reason to assign later consequences done in the name after death.

Named person as heading of the dated public instrument. Later editors, museums, printers, or offices share publication. Complex where later carriers date the row.

## Evidence and sources

Grenoble’s Roman-law/Price Edict fragment pages and Cambridge independently describe the 301 edict and its penalties.

Official or archival record: Roman law texts including Price Edict fragments — Grenoble (https://droitromain.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/; Université Grenoble Alpes / Droit romain).

## Significance

A price police with death penalties is an inequality-and-coercion path of high confidence on the text, medium on how often the death clause bit.

Fragments are not a supermarket. Split later scholarly access as improving.

A price police with death penalties is an inequality-and-coercion path of high confidence on the text, medium on how often the death clause bit.

## What is established and what is not

Established: 301 Price Edict with severe penalties, fragments extant. Not established: that it lowered a consumer-price index as a measured series.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

Established here: a sourced, dated public instrument with a named contribution by Diocletian.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date, signatory, or non-occurrence; a demonstrated forgery; or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of other causes.

Contribution type is direct. They are not a public rating.

## People

- Diocletian: https://factrail.ai/people/diocletian

## Drivers

- Income Inequality: https://factrail.ai/drivers/income-inequality

## Sources

- https://droitromain.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/
- https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-ancient-history/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/di-price-edict-coercion