SOURCE: Cameron, Alan. “Probus' Praetorian Games: Olympiodorus Fr. 44.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 25, no. 2 (summer 1984): 193-96.

In the following excerpt, Cameron explicates “Fragment 44” of Olympiodorus's Books of History, a piece that concerns the expenditures of wealthy Roman patricians.

Many of the Roman households received an income of four thousand pounds of gold per year from their properties, not including grain, wine and other produce which, if sold, would have amounted to one-third of the income in gold. The income of the households at Rome of the second class was one thousand or fifteen hundred pounds of gold. When Probus, the son of Alypius, celebrated his praetorship during the reign of the usurper John, he spent twelve hundred pounds of gold. Before the capture of Rome, Symmachus the orator, a senator of middling wealth, spent two thousand pounds when his son, Symmachus, celebrated his praetorship. Maximus, one of the...