Abstract This chapter presents the few wheat prices known from the Roman Empire, military and some other official and private earnings, and a small selection of items from Diocletian's Edict on Maximum Prices. It attempts to assess our ability to determine whether there was an integrated market for goods and labour in the Roman Empire, what the living standards of different groups were, and whether significant changes across time are visible in market integration or living standards. The conclusion is that the Romans acted and thought as if the empire was an integrated market, although there are indications of regional zones of prices and, more sharply, wages, that the prices in Diocletian's Edict appear to be unhistorical, inconsistent and unreliable, and that there was a dramatic rise in the purchasing power of gold in late antiquity.
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