Labour status and economic stratification in the Roman world : the hierarchy of wages in Egypt

The hierarchy of workers’ incomes and wages in the Roman world has long drawn the attention of scholars. The series of workers’ wages we have at our disposal comes mostly from Roman and Byzantine Egypt: account books, labour contracts, and orders or receipts of payment on papyri and ostraca. Since the 1930s, lists of wages and prices have been compiled, firstly, to study the purchasing power of the working population and, secondly, to classify the trades according to the workers’ qualifications and to the location of employment