DIOCLETIAN, EDICT OF, an imperial edict (A.D. 301) fixing a maximum price for provisions and other articles, and a maximum rate of wages. Incomplete copies of it have been dis covered, the first (in Greek and Latin) in 1709, at Stratonicea in Caria, containing the preamble and the beginning of the tables down to No. 403. A second fragment (now in the museum at Aix, in Provence) was brought from Egypt in 1809 ; it adds the titles of the emperors and Caesars, and the number of times they had held them, whereby the date can be determined. Other fragments have been found, e.g., at Elatea, Plataea, and Megalopolis. Latin being the official language all over the empire, there was no official Greek translation. All the fragments come from the provinces which were under the jurisdiction of Diocletian, i.e., the eastern portion of the empire. No traces have been found in the western empire. The articles mentioned in the edict, giving their relative values at the time, include cereals, wine, oil, meat, vegetables, fruits, skins, leather, furs, foot-gear, timber, carpets, and articles of dress, and the wages range from those of the ordinary labourer to those of the professional advocate. The unit of money was a copper coin introduced by Diocletian, of which the value has been fixed at one-fifth of a penny. The punishment for exceeding the prices fixed was death or deportation. The edict was a well-in tended but abortive attempt to meet the distress caused by several bad harvests and commercial speculation. The actual effect was disastrous, and the edict soon fell into abeyance.
See Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum; Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum, a contemporary who, as a Christian, writes with natural bias against Diocletian; J. E. Sandys, Companion to Latin Studies (1921) , with useful bibliography. There is an edition of the whole edict by Mommsen, with notes by H. Blumner (1893) .