Talk:Sestertius

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[edit] Value in modern terms

I arrived here from the Commodus page. Commodus paid himself 1m sestertii for appearing in the colloseum, obviously a fortune. Yet I'm having trouble working out the value of a single sestertius in modern terms. One sestertius is worth 1/4 denarius, which was about the daily wage for an unskilled labourer, but what would it have bought in terms of, eg. loaves of bread, food, wine, clothes, accomodation, ...? Richard W.M. Jones 18:40, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

There is a linl on the Roman provincial coins page to detail this, I prefer to think in third world turms instead of first world. Enlil Ninlil 07:21, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Crumbs, complicated! Thanks though, that page [1] was very interesting. Richard W.M. Jones 08:57, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation

The article currently states that sesterce is pronounced "ses-ter-see", but I have always heard it pronounced "SES-terse", and indeed, the OED recommends /'sɛstɜːs/, so I am at least putting up a {{fact}} for now. --Iustinus 22:45, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes I've just looked the OED up and you're right. That was just how my Latin teacher always pronounced it, probably a back-formation from the plural.GSTQ 06:02, 17 January 2007 (UTC)