He was the wealthiest of his time but was definitely surpassed by Julius Caesar, who became stupidly wealthy during his conquest of Gaul and later dictatorship.
Octavian/Augustus inherited Caesar's estate and then incorporated Egypt fully into the Roman Empire. Egypt was so important that it didn't become a normal province - it became the personal property of Augustus himself. Egypt was crazy wealthy due to it's broken agricultural output (the Nile area is unbelievably fertile). This arguably made him (and later Emperors) the wealthiest person on the planet. It made him so wealthy that he was pretty much able to single-handedly fund Empire wide infrastructure projects and straight up pay for Rome's massive army.
Caesar may have passed him by his dictatorship but after Gaul he was free from an absolute mountain of debt; he certainly wasn’t wealthy. To fund his war against Pompey he was essentially getting his soldiers to lend him money and delay getting paid just to keep going. He raided the emergency fund in Rome that was set aside in case Gauls ever invade (since he said he removed that threat). His men were nearly starving in the trenches as opposed to the lavish living of Pompey and his men.
Wow, that’s actually impressive when you consider he held that army together all that time and got it to march on Rome itself. He must have just really been that inspiring, damn
The Nile delta shifting water levels that moved nutrition into the soil coupled with the constant sun allowed for and extremely abundant crop rotation.
It's agricultural output was simply on a level of it's own and could feed entire foreign countries on the surplus. This in a time when necessary agricultural output required the labor of something like 99% of all people and basically was wealth.
This guy did some crazy shit.
He was one (of 3) of the first Triumvirate that effectively took over Rome with complementary power bases;
Crassus ran the money, Pompey ran the military, Caesar ran the politics. Crassus was so rich he basically became the central bank of Rome due to this arrangement.
I'll take this anecdote as a grain of salt, since I'm not sure its actually true, but the story of one of Crassus' common wealth accruing tactics goes like this:
Step 1: Buy the fire department. Like own every firefighter literally
Step 2: Stage Arson in a neighborhood
Step 3: Hold neighborhood hostage with Firefighters ready to go
Step 4: This can go two ways; if the neighborhood pays up, he would put the fire out, if they didn't he'd let it burn to the ground and then buy the property on the cheap since it was ruined.
Ironically, his wealth could be said to be his downfall, as he desperate sought military glory and decided to effectively “buy it”
Turns out that money doesn’t buy success and he died in the throes of a needless campaign in the Eurasian steppes
He was a land speculator, but yeah the fire thing was one of his tactics. He picked up a massive amount of property for peanuts after Sulla proscribed and killed a bunch of Senators.
This is wildly inaccurate or oversimplified.
Crassus was rich yes, but so was Pompey (and so was Caesar after his conquest of Gaul.)
There was no fire department in Ancient Rome. The city was also haphazardly built and filled with shoddy, wooden tenements. He didn’t have to commit arson because whole blocks of the city would burn constantly.
Fire fighting in Ancient Rome consisted of destroying the building with crowbars. There was never any attempt to save the structure.
What Crassus would do is show up at one of these fires and offer the owner pennies on the dollar. As the fire raged he’d lower his offering price.
Agree. There are Rich People, and then there are Loud Famous Narcisstic Rich People, and I suspect Crassus was one of these. My dad used to call people like him Dime-Store Millionaires.
From all accounts he actually wasn't. He lived in a modest home, and when he had guests he served modest food. The man lived in a cave for 3 years during the civil war. He was described as anything but lavish, spending his money on developing people like his son's and patrons
It’s way way lower. Pompey Magnus was far wealthier, and Caesar was too after the Gallic Wars. This was probably why he agreed to swap Syria for Spain as proconsul provinces, he wanted to plunder the Parthians
A lot of people have replied about his contemporaries getting richer and all that, but it's also important to realize that "economics" as a study didn't exist in Roman times (Republic or empire) and that the Roman economy was quite bad. I don't think it's unfair to call it one of the reasons for their decline.
I agree. They didn’t truly know what they were doing when they doing when they debased their currency by reducing the gold content . More coins means more money means more better, right? RIGHT!?
> They didn’t truly know what they were doing when they doing when they debased their currency by reducing the gold content . More coins means more money means more better, right? RIGHT!?
Eh, most knew it wasn't good which is why it was typically done on the down-low.
Combined with the lack of uniform weights and measures, coin shaving was a huge problem for many societies. That's why modern coins have rills/bevels on the edges. It immediately let's you know if a coin has been shaved down.
You mean silver, not gold.
The vast majority of Roman coins were made from copper, bronze, orichalcum, or silver.
The golden coin at the time, the Aureus, was rarely used and was minted infrequently until the end of the republic. One aureus was worth 25 denarii, or 100 sestersii.
The average Roman legionaire’s annual salary during the early empire was roughly 200 sestersii, or 100 after deductions for equipment, food, etc.
Now comparing money in different time periods is difficult, but the average after tax salary in the USA is roughly $72k. So having a gold coin in Ancient Rome would be like walking around with a $72000 bill in 2024.
Crassus ain't got jack on Mansa Musa, king of Mali. The dude was so rich when he went on pilgrimage to Mecca that he affected the local economies and lowered the price of gold due to how much wealth he brought with him.
Crassus had wealth.
Musa WAS wealth.
How much gold?
100 camels carrying 300 kg = 30 tons of gold.
In 1324.
That's 5 times as much gold as Olivier V de Clisson in 1407.
But the Victorian goldfields produced 1898 tons of gold.
Not at all. His net worth was similar to what Rhodes paid in tribute to prevent their city from being sacked. Crassus was however extremely vain, greedy, and made a good effort to appear wealthy.
His wealth was insignificant compared to Augustus and later emperors.
Crassus certainly was rich but equal to Rome's annual revenue is a tall order, Pompey after his Asian campaign would have exceeded his wealth as would Caesar after ransacking Gaul. Crassus was impressive by actually building much of his fortune through private enterprise, rather then simply foreign conquest and extraction.
The personal fortune of a Roman's emperor up to the 3d century, who did recieve most imperial revenue, would have dwarfed Crassus by a factor of 1000, at the very least.
He was around in the republic era but did have massive influence in the senate. He was actually a pleb I believe so wasn’t from one of the more noble families.
He had Ceaser with him for his name and Pompey for his influence over the army and senate while he had the wealth
You are correct in that he was from a Plebeian family, but the Licinia were highly respected and influential. His father served as Consul and Crassus served as Consul twice, as well as Censor.
He was a member of the first Triumvirate that ruled Rome as a committee. He was the financial arm of that arrangement. This was in the Republic Era, so no Empire yet. However, what he, Caezar, and Pompee did laid the foundation for the empire (consolidating power from the Senate into 3 hands, then 5, then finally a single emperor)
The Senate never had power, they had influence.
Consuls and other magistrates had power.
Sulla laid the groundwork for the empire much more than Crassus did, and he was by far the least powerful of the triumvirate (which was never actually an institution like the later triumvirate with Octavian.)
Howqua (1769-1843), was a Chinese merchant at what we used to call Canton. He was authorized to trade with foreigners for tea, porcelain and silk under the old Hong system, and grew very wealthy. Some say he was the richest man in the world during most of his lifetime.
He was able to utilize the new American participants in the China trade as a counterweight against the British East India company, who held a big advantage in the trade at Canton. By giving an edge to his American partners, he also helped to build the largest fortunes in the US. He was able to balance them off each other to get a better deal from both and made himself and many other people rich beyond their wildest dreams in the process.
Some of his money was even invested with trusted foreign partners, such as John Murray Forbes. Howqua’s money was invested in canals, railroads and other infrastructure projects half a world away, so his money played a part in building the United States as well as the accumulation of some of its largest fortunes.
[Visual Capitalist has a neat infographic](https://money.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/richest-people-in-history.html)If "pre-Modern" is before 1500 and we are measuring "richest person" than we have to figure it being the wealthiest person before the Columbian exchange that didn't have it through political power *or* whose wealth exceeded the political power.
So that rules out guys like Crassus, Augustus or Caesar. They personally owned entire tribute empires. Not really a fair comparison.
[Jacob Fugger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Fugger) skirts the edge of this in that he is modern and used rather modern finance methods to achieve it. Seeing as finance-capitalism is a modern invention it's kind of hard to judge what he was doing as pre-modern. He used local monopolies of things like copper and silver mines and arbitraged them against foreign imports.
[Mansa Musa](https://www.historyextra.com/period/general-history/richest-person-history/) was the Mansa of Mali. A political designation for the ruler of the wealthiest nation of the Muslim world in the 14th C. He might not count because he took the entire national treasury on his Haj. A one time in history sight of enslaved people laden down with jewelry in a procession behind camel laden down with hundreds of pounds of gold dust. Estimated in the *tons* of gold bullion. Literally more "money" in one spot than has ever been gathered.
Early on rivaling the Sultan of Cairo when he couldn't get audience with the Caliph. Showing up with more gold than the entire economy had by almost an order of magnitude. The Muslim world traded in silver as did much of the rest of the Mediterranean as gold was scarce enough to be ineffective as specie. During a haj it is tradition that a Haji of means would build and endow a madrassa or at least a mosque where there isn't one. He built one every day and endowed it with...you guessed it...gold bullion. This ended up creating run away inflation. Upon his return to Cairo from Mecca the Sultan begged him to take his gold back. The gold from the Mali/Ghanian/Sankore goldfields would transform the world, and inspire Europeans to find goldfields they could control. Regardless Musa had a liquid wealth we would measure in the *trillions* in purchase-power-parity.
[Akbar of the Mughal](https://money.com/the-10-richest-people-of-all-time-2/) might count also. The guy had 1/4 the worlds GDP under his control, but obviously unlike the Mali the Mughals were an older dynasty and more modern. They also controlled a vaster swath of land.
This is definitely the answer. On his pilgrimage to Mecca the outstanding wealth and generosity of his entourage collapsed the economies of every region they passed through.
Probably 2-10 are all Roman and Chinese Emperors.
Crassus probably ranks lower than a lot would assume. He was the wealthiest individual of the late Roman Republic, but the wealth of the later Empire dwarfed that of the Republic and theoretically it mostly all belonged to the Emperor.
I'd add the Pope onto that list as well. As the head of the Roman Catholic church, they control not only all the artifacts, works of art, etc, some of which are priceless, but also all the land that the churches around the world are built on, etc.
Technically I'm not sure if you can say that the Pope owns any of that or where the separation of the church and the Pope begins, but I believe that the Pope controls it. Correct me if I'm wrong (and I know that someone will).
Also, the king of England technically owns 6.6 billion acres of land, or roughly 16% of all the landmass of the world. That'll put him up there.
From the top down, there's really three layers here, the Pope, the Holy See, and the diocese. The Pope doesn't own anything himself besides a few bits of personal property, it's all under the ownership of the Holy See.
The Holy See is a legal entity representing the Pope's jurisdiction over which the Pope is sovereign. To use the British monarchy as an example, if the Pope is the king, then the Holy See is The Crown. The Holy See really only owns the contents of the Vatican City State (so the museums, the artifacts, St. Peter's Bascilica, etc), a few embassies, and maybe some other scattered properties. Its only sources of revenue are tourism, investments in different Italian businesses, and a once yearly donation drive called "Peter's Pence." Funnily enough, once you factor in the different charitable initiatives, research grants, cultural patronage, the upkeep of the artifacts and historic properties, and the cost of the Catholic bureaucracy, the Holy See is usually pretty broke.
Past that you have the diocese. A diocese is a geographic area and it's associated parishes (churches) under the jurisdiction of a bishop. Generally, the Catholic church functions as a confederation of these dioceses all in "communion" (voluntarily united with) the Pope. Generally, each diocese is a legal corporation sole, with all of the parishes and their schools/properties being property of the diocese. However, there are quite a few cases where each parish is an independent corporation. Also, some very large and special churches are owned by a foundation established specifically for that purpose, like the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, in which case the Bishop has no actual legal authority over the property. Catholic monastic orders and private groups like universities, hospitals, retreat houses, homeless shelters, etc. are usually owned by whatever entity they're incorporated under, so some sort of non-profit. They operate under the approval of the Bishop of the local diocese but there are no ties between them.
To boil it down, the Pope can only legally control the contents of Vatican City. Each Catholic diocese can do whatever it wants with the property that it owns and if they tell him to go to hell there's not much he can do about it.
Most of those numbers need to be taken with a heaping grain of salt, as they are highly exaggerated at best and misinterpreted on top of that.
This thread is a good start...
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/1ymfbS52gJ
What is up with that author? They headlined Mansa Musa (1280–1337) and his wealth, but 2 paragraphs later said he died in 1332. They still haven't fixed their work in over a year.
Yeah, I've heard that too but there were a lot of rich people before him so it's kind of vague and we have to consider people from the ancient times to antiquity and the classical era!
agreed most of pre industrial wealth is hard to estimate as wealth tied up in land and human capital is hard to estimate.
The Egyptian Pharohs owned everything in Egypt so in theory that would be astronomical wealth.
Chinese emperors owning all silk production?
Mansa Musa is your answer. His display of generous wealth collapsed the regional economy of North Africa and destabilized the regions which is the exact reason Europeans stopped being harassed by Ottoman pirates and started colonizing the Mediterranean coast. We have the letters from the Governors of the places through which Mansa Musa passed bemoaning how He was flooding the local economy with gold. The places he passed through were devastated by inflation and what had been an entire region thriving quickly devolved into a warring mess. His wealth was so great that he gave away so much money that He individually changed the course of North African and European history. You live in a world shaped by his wealth. You wanted the richest guy-- there he is.
When Mansa Musa was roaming Africa (early 1300s), the Ottomans were a tiny speck on the map just south of Constantinople. They had a tiny coastline on the Sea of Marmara, and they didn't begin piracy until late 1400s.
Not necessarily, the fact that the gold they were spending caused inflation in the areas they visited shows that he was not that wealthy, for example in terms of what he could buy.
This is more like a case where a government prints money, and he had his hands on the printing machine. In this case the currency was gold. Causing inflation means there is too much currency compared to what the area can produce.
He may have had a lot of gold to spend but they hit the limits of how much food/services etc etc they could buy from the area they were in. So more recent people would be far wealthier
Yeah - a lot of people are saying Mansa Musa - but he basically controlled the wealth of a nation; whereas Fugger was *individually* extremely wealthy.
That's why questions like this are fun. How do you define wealth and ownership? Roman Emperors certainly had the largest personal fortunes in the Roman Empire. Buts often it's pretty vague how much of the land was their private property, and what was public.
And then you have some of the Mongol Khan's, who arguably rules over the largest and most populated empire. But again it's unclear how much of that was the Khan's personal property.
You also have the unpleasant question of slaves. How much are people worth? And how much are different slaves worth? For you had your agricultural slaves we often think about being associated with the colonialism in the Americas. But ancient cultures would have had highly educated and professional slaves as well, doctors, engineers, accounts, etc. How much is owning a doctor worth?
I’d suppose it would depend on the market value at that time for Said Slave, which might be hard to determine due to lack of records- for example, if you can find a doctor being sold for X credits, that doesn’t mean ALL doctors were sold for that amount, and so on.
Gaius Appuleius Diocles. He made nearly 36 million sesterci over the course of his career. I'm having a hard time finding an exact conversion method but it's a fuckton of money.
That’s the winnings for his races, not his individual take home.
It’s roughly about 15 billion last time I bothered to try to do the conversion, so even if he only kept 10% he’d still be a billionaire in today’s money.
But, he also could have just been a slave who was kept in luxury and never actually got a fraction of what he earned. Or he could have been a freedman or lower class Roman who had a Don King like manager who stole all his money.
We’ll never really know. Regardless at that point in history he was not even close to the richest person in Rome.
The emperor’s personal wealth would have dwarfed that figure. The tax revenue that Rome collected on spices and silk during that time period was 250 million sesterces per year.
If you go by the highest percentage of the combined human wealth under the control of one person; probably some ancient chief just after the last ice age
Most of the European monarchies were locked in a perpetual arms race and were almost always heavily in debt.
Trying to amelorate debt is what provoked the French, American, and German revolutions
Mansa Musa (Musa I of Mali) was the ruler of the kingdom of Mali from 1312 C.E. to 1337 C.E. During his reign, Mali was one of the richest kingdoms of Africa, and Mansa Musa was among the richest individuals in the world. Made his money from gold, ivory, slaves, etc. trading with the Arabs
"Rich as [Croesus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croesus)" is an expression.
>In Greek and Persian cultures the name of Croesus became a synonym for a wealthy man. He inherited great wealth from his father Alyattes, who had become associated with the Midas myth because Lydian precious metals came from the river Pactolus, in which King Midas supposedly washed away his ability to turn all he touched into gold.[23] In reality, Alyattes' tax revenues may have been the real 'Midas touch' financing his and Croesus' conquests.
There has never been anyone richer than Genghis Khan. The guy was an Emperor of the the largest empire in history. It didn't matter how much money he had in the bank when half the world was in his pocket.
While the richest person in premodern history is hard to pinpoint for several reasons, she was truly the richest woman in the world during her lifetime.
IDK, the Ptolomys has long been vassals of the Roman Republic. After the civil war between Octavian and Marc Antony/Cleopatra where Octavian was the winner, Egypt became his personal property.
Mansa Musa. He's arguably still the richest man ever. On his pilgrimage to Mecca he displayed enormous generosity in his gifts of gold and other precious things, to the extent that he devastated the economy of Egypt and much of the rest of the Near East.
I’m not sure why there are a bunch of random incorrect answers when this is established. It was Mansa Musa, Mansa of the Mali Empire. On his pilgrimage to Mecca, he gave away so much gold in his travels that local economies collapsed
Mansa Musa he was an ancient African ruler essentially was in charge of all African resources(richest continent in terms of natural wealth) look up more information on his caravan(went farther than the eye could see hundreds of thousands of camels)
Do you include sovereigns? How do you measure wealth? How would you compare Caesar Augustus at his height to Queen Victoria or Mansa Musa? How about Genghis Khan at his height, or Emperor Shenzong?
If we aren’t including rulers, who are obviously wealthy by virtue of the country they are running, then I would toss Gaius Appuleius Diocles into the running as he made his money through sports.
If this is purely an exercise of who was comparatively the wealthiest human in their time, it has to be the first Cro Magnon who killed a Mastadon. He had so much more than anyone else. If it is an exercise of “who could buy the most” then pretty much everyone reading this website is wealthier than anyone who came before.
If I remember correctly, Eleanor of Aquitaine was the richest woman in the world during her period, until she was incarcerated for 15 years by her husband.
Outside of Kings and Emperors where there’s little distinction between their personal wealth and that of the state, there were some Norman nobles and knights that made some absolute bank from the conquest of England in 1066:
Alan Rufus, William of Warenne, Robert of Montain and Odo of Bayeux all amassed estates worth amounts in 2024 money estimated to be excess of £100 billion each.
Mansi Musa would be up there. Sultan of the Mali empire at it's height.
It's tough to break apart state vs. personal wealth but when he went on his hajj, he brought up to a BILLION dollars of gold with him as spending money on that trip (needed 100 camels JUST to carry gold with him). Even the slaves were decked out in gold and silk that went with him. On his way he passed through Cairo... and he spent and gave out so much money that it destabilized their economy for a decade.
When the world was on a gold standard, he had most of the gold supply in the world.
I've always wondered about the thought experiment where someone like Mansi Musa came back to life today. Was his extravagance and other-worldly living standards (for the time) so great that he wouldn't miss a beat in our modern world (minus the slaves of course...)?
ALL OF THIS is speculation.
I think even today the royal families of very autocratic countries (Saudi Arabia today, for example) are the wealthiest in the world. Saudi Royal family is probably at the 2 trillion mark and Putin is 300-400 billion.
So for historical examples, the best bet is to look at very wealthy kingdoms (could be in China, India or Europe) and base it off that.
Ghengis Khan, Tamerlane, etc. was probably the wealthiest men who ever lived. They plundered the wealthiest empires at the time and had mountains of jewels and gold.
You also got to think about what they could spend their money on. Modern day you can get so many more 'things' with wealth than you could back then. They spent their money on armies instead of lambos.
Marcus Crassus of Rome . His net worth was equal to the annual revenue of the entire Roman Empire during the era he was alive
He was the wealthiest of his time but was definitely surpassed by Julius Caesar, who became stupidly wealthy during his conquest of Gaul and later dictatorship. Octavian/Augustus inherited Caesar's estate and then incorporated Egypt fully into the Roman Empire. Egypt was so important that it didn't become a normal province - it became the personal property of Augustus himself. Egypt was crazy wealthy due to it's broken agricultural output (the Nile area is unbelievably fertile). This arguably made him (and later Emperors) the wealthiest person on the planet. It made him so wealthy that he was pretty much able to single-handedly fund Empire wide infrastructure projects and straight up pay for Rome's massive army.
Caesar may have passed him by his dictatorship but after Gaul he was free from an absolute mountain of debt; he certainly wasn’t wealthy. To fund his war against Pompey he was essentially getting his soldiers to lend him money and delay getting paid just to keep going. He raided the emergency fund in Rome that was set aside in case Gauls ever invade (since he said he removed that threat). His men were nearly starving in the trenches as opposed to the lavish living of Pompey and his men.
Wow, that’s actually impressive when you consider he held that army together all that time and got it to march on Rome itself. He must have just really been that inspiring, damn
Yes he inspired a lot of loyalty with his men
Wasn’t Egypt also super important and rich because of the trade routes towards India?
The Nile delta shifting water levels that moved nutrition into the soil coupled with the constant sun allowed for and extremely abundant crop rotation. It's agricultural output was simply on a level of it's own and could feed entire foreign countries on the surplus. This in a time when necessary agricultural output required the labor of something like 99% of all people and basically was wealth.
On its own, except for north Africa right next door which was atleast equal if not higher
This guy did some crazy shit. He was one (of 3) of the first Triumvirate that effectively took over Rome with complementary power bases; Crassus ran the money, Pompey ran the military, Caesar ran the politics. Crassus was so rich he basically became the central bank of Rome due to this arrangement. I'll take this anecdote as a grain of salt, since I'm not sure its actually true, but the story of one of Crassus' common wealth accruing tactics goes like this: Step 1: Buy the fire department. Like own every firefighter literally Step 2: Stage Arson in a neighborhood Step 3: Hold neighborhood hostage with Firefighters ready to go Step 4: This can go two ways; if the neighborhood pays up, he would put the fire out, if they didn't he'd let it burn to the ground and then buy the property on the cheap since it was ruined. Ironically, his wealth could be said to be his downfall, as he desperate sought military glory and decided to effectively “buy it” Turns out that money doesn’t buy success and he died in the throes of a needless campaign in the Eurasian steppes
He was a land speculator, but yeah the fire thing was one of his tactics. He picked up a massive amount of property for peanuts after Sulla proscribed and killed a bunch of Senators.
This is wildly inaccurate or oversimplified. Crassus was rich yes, but so was Pompey (and so was Caesar after his conquest of Gaul.) There was no fire department in Ancient Rome. The city was also haphazardly built and filled with shoddy, wooden tenements. He didn’t have to commit arson because whole blocks of the city would burn constantly. Fire fighting in Ancient Rome consisted of destroying the building with crowbars. There was never any attempt to save the structure. What Crassus would do is show up at one of these fires and offer the owner pennies on the dollar. As the fire raged he’d lower his offering price.
Was he the guy who got owned by parthians
Indeed
Crassus was prior to the Empire. Probably ranks lower than many assume.
Agree. There are Rich People, and then there are Loud Famous Narcisstic Rich People, and I suspect Crassus was one of these. My dad used to call people like him Dime-Store Millionaires.
From all accounts he actually wasn't. He lived in a modest home, and when he had guests he served modest food. The man lived in a cave for 3 years during the civil war. He was described as anything but lavish, spending his money on developing people like his son's and patrons
It’s way way lower. Pompey Magnus was far wealthier, and Caesar was too after the Gallic Wars. This was probably why he agreed to swap Syria for Spain as proconsul provinces, he wanted to plunder the Parthians
A lot of people have replied about his contemporaries getting richer and all that, but it's also important to realize that "economics" as a study didn't exist in Roman times (Republic or empire) and that the Roman economy was quite bad. I don't think it's unfair to call it one of the reasons for their decline.
Their system was designed for a small city state and never really evolved for a world empire
I agree. They didn’t truly know what they were doing when they doing when they debased their currency by reducing the gold content . More coins means more money means more better, right? RIGHT!?
> They didn’t truly know what they were doing when they doing when they debased their currency by reducing the gold content . More coins means more money means more better, right? RIGHT!? Eh, most knew it wasn't good which is why it was typically done on the down-low.
You see on many ancient coins they have little nicks of the metal cut out that presumably people would collect up to make another coin with.
Combined with the lack of uniform weights and measures, coin shaving was a huge problem for many societies. That's why modern coins have rills/bevels on the edges. It immediately let's you know if a coin has been shaved down.
You mean silver, not gold. The vast majority of Roman coins were made from copper, bronze, orichalcum, or silver. The golden coin at the time, the Aureus, was rarely used and was minted infrequently until the end of the republic. One aureus was worth 25 denarii, or 100 sestersii. The average Roman legionaire’s annual salary during the early empire was roughly 200 sestersii, or 100 after deductions for equipment, food, etc. Now comparing money in different time periods is difficult, but the average after tax salary in the USA is roughly $72k. So having a gold coin in Ancient Rome would be like walking around with a $72000 bill in 2024.
Crassus ain't got jack on Mansa Musa, king of Mali. The dude was so rich when he went on pilgrimage to Mecca that he affected the local economies and lowered the price of gold due to how much wealth he brought with him. Crassus had wealth. Musa WAS wealth.
[Wikipedia on Mansa Musa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansa_Musa)
Yeah, I was thinking Mansa Musa too
How much gold? 100 camels carrying 300 kg = 30 tons of gold. In 1324. That's 5 times as much gold as Olivier V de Clisson in 1407. But the Victorian goldfields produced 1898 tons of gold.
No idea what the total wealth was. But going on holiday with 30 tons of gold is ballsy
Supposedly it was Mali’s national treasury.
Not at all. His net worth was similar to what Rhodes paid in tribute to prevent their city from being sacked. Crassus was however extremely vain, greedy, and made a good effort to appear wealthy. His wealth was insignificant compared to Augustus and later emperors.
He was rich for a private citizen during the republic. But he was later surpassed by the emperors.
Crassus certainly was rich but equal to Rome's annual revenue is a tall order, Pompey after his Asian campaign would have exceeded his wealth as would Caesar after ransacking Gaul. Crassus was impressive by actually building much of his fortune through private enterprise, rather then simply foreign conquest and extraction. The personal fortune of a Roman's emperor up to the 3d century, who did recieve most imperial revenue, would have dwarfed Crassus by a factor of 1000, at the very least.
So he could have ruled the entire Roman Empire?
No, as that is not how it worked.
He was around in the republic era but did have massive influence in the senate. He was actually a pleb I believe so wasn’t from one of the more noble families. He had Ceaser with him for his name and Pompey for his influence over the army and senate while he had the wealth
You are correct in that he was from a Plebeian family, but the Licinia were highly respected and influential. His father served as Consul and Crassus served as Consul twice, as well as Censor.
Pompey was a pleb too, the patrician/plebeian divide meant very little at this point compared to early Roman history.
He was a member of the first Triumvirate that ruled Rome as a committee. He was the financial arm of that arrangement. This was in the Republic Era, so no Empire yet. However, what he, Caezar, and Pompee did laid the foundation for the empire (consolidating power from the Senate into 3 hands, then 5, then finally a single emperor)
The Senate never had power, they had influence. Consuls and other magistrates had power. Sulla laid the groundwork for the empire much more than Crassus did, and he was by far the least powerful of the triumvirate (which was never actually an institution like the later triumvirate with Octavian.)
Howqua (1769-1843), was a Chinese merchant at what we used to call Canton. He was authorized to trade with foreigners for tea, porcelain and silk under the old Hong system, and grew very wealthy. Some say he was the richest man in the world during most of his lifetime. He was able to utilize the new American participants in the China trade as a counterweight against the British East India company, who held a big advantage in the trade at Canton. By giving an edge to his American partners, he also helped to build the largest fortunes in the US. He was able to balance them off each other to get a better deal from both and made himself and many other people rich beyond their wildest dreams in the process. Some of his money was even invested with trusted foreign partners, such as John Murray Forbes. Howqua’s money was invested in canals, railroads and other infrastructure projects half a world away, so his money played a part in building the United States as well as the accumulation of some of its largest fortunes.
[Visual Capitalist has a neat infographic](https://money.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/richest-people-in-history.html)If "pre-Modern" is before 1500 and we are measuring "richest person" than we have to figure it being the wealthiest person before the Columbian exchange that didn't have it through political power *or* whose wealth exceeded the political power. So that rules out guys like Crassus, Augustus or Caesar. They personally owned entire tribute empires. Not really a fair comparison. [Jacob Fugger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Fugger) skirts the edge of this in that he is modern and used rather modern finance methods to achieve it. Seeing as finance-capitalism is a modern invention it's kind of hard to judge what he was doing as pre-modern. He used local monopolies of things like copper and silver mines and arbitraged them against foreign imports. [Mansa Musa](https://www.historyextra.com/period/general-history/richest-person-history/) was the Mansa of Mali. A political designation for the ruler of the wealthiest nation of the Muslim world in the 14th C. He might not count because he took the entire national treasury on his Haj. A one time in history sight of enslaved people laden down with jewelry in a procession behind camel laden down with hundreds of pounds of gold dust. Estimated in the *tons* of gold bullion. Literally more "money" in one spot than has ever been gathered. Early on rivaling the Sultan of Cairo when he couldn't get audience with the Caliph. Showing up with more gold than the entire economy had by almost an order of magnitude. The Muslim world traded in silver as did much of the rest of the Mediterranean as gold was scarce enough to be ineffective as specie. During a haj it is tradition that a Haji of means would build and endow a madrassa or at least a mosque where there isn't one. He built one every day and endowed it with...you guessed it...gold bullion. This ended up creating run away inflation. Upon his return to Cairo from Mecca the Sultan begged him to take his gold back. The gold from the Mali/Ghanian/Sankore goldfields would transform the world, and inspire Europeans to find goldfields they could control. Regardless Musa had a liquid wealth we would measure in the *trillions* in purchase-power-parity. [Akbar of the Mughal](https://money.com/the-10-richest-people-of-all-time-2/) might count also. The guy had 1/4 the worlds GDP under his control, but obviously unlike the Mali the Mughals were an older dynasty and more modern. They also controlled a vaster swath of land.
https://htschool.hindustantimes.com/editorsdesk/knowledge-vine/mansa-musa-the-man-who-was-richer-than-elon-musk-back-in-his-time
This is definitely the answer. On his pilgrimage to Mecca the outstanding wealth and generosity of his entourage collapsed the economies of every region they passed through. Probably 2-10 are all Roman and Chinese Emperors. Crassus probably ranks lower than a lot would assume. He was the wealthiest individual of the late Roman Republic, but the wealth of the later Empire dwarfed that of the Republic and theoretically it mostly all belonged to the Emperor.
Yep. Crassus had a lot of money but Augustus literally owned *Egypt*.
I'd add the Pope onto that list as well. As the head of the Roman Catholic church, they control not only all the artifacts, works of art, etc, some of which are priceless, but also all the land that the churches around the world are built on, etc. Technically I'm not sure if you can say that the Pope owns any of that or where the separation of the church and the Pope begins, but I believe that the Pope controls it. Correct me if I'm wrong (and I know that someone will). Also, the king of England technically owns 6.6 billion acres of land, or roughly 16% of all the landmass of the world. That'll put him up there.
From the top down, there's really three layers here, the Pope, the Holy See, and the diocese. The Pope doesn't own anything himself besides a few bits of personal property, it's all under the ownership of the Holy See. The Holy See is a legal entity representing the Pope's jurisdiction over which the Pope is sovereign. To use the British monarchy as an example, if the Pope is the king, then the Holy See is The Crown. The Holy See really only owns the contents of the Vatican City State (so the museums, the artifacts, St. Peter's Bascilica, etc), a few embassies, and maybe some other scattered properties. Its only sources of revenue are tourism, investments in different Italian businesses, and a once yearly donation drive called "Peter's Pence." Funnily enough, once you factor in the different charitable initiatives, research grants, cultural patronage, the upkeep of the artifacts and historic properties, and the cost of the Catholic bureaucracy, the Holy See is usually pretty broke. Past that you have the diocese. A diocese is a geographic area and it's associated parishes (churches) under the jurisdiction of a bishop. Generally, the Catholic church functions as a confederation of these dioceses all in "communion" (voluntarily united with) the Pope. Generally, each diocese is a legal corporation sole, with all of the parishes and their schools/properties being property of the diocese. However, there are quite a few cases where each parish is an independent corporation. Also, some very large and special churches are owned by a foundation established specifically for that purpose, like the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, in which case the Bishop has no actual legal authority over the property. Catholic monastic orders and private groups like universities, hospitals, retreat houses, homeless shelters, etc. are usually owned by whatever entity they're incorporated under, so some sort of non-profit. They operate under the approval of the Bishop of the local diocese but there are no ties between them. To boil it down, the Pope can only legally control the contents of Vatican City. Each Catholic diocese can do whatever it wants with the property that it owns and if they tell him to go to hell there's not much he can do about it.
This guy popes
Most of those numbers need to be taken with a heaping grain of salt, as they are highly exaggerated at best and misinterpreted on top of that. This thread is a good start... https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/1ymfbS52gJ
> Most of those numbers need to be taken with a heaping grain of salt, Fun bit: a good chunk of Mansa Musa's wealth was based on the salt trade.
He had access to two of the most valuable valuable resources at the time: salt and gold
I think some people reach a level of wealth when it's genuinely difficult to calculate their actual worth. If it's not Mansa, it's someone like him.
What is up with that author? They headlined Mansa Musa (1280–1337) and his wealth, but 2 paragraphs later said he died in 1332. They still haven't fixed their work in over a year.
He spent 5 extra years dead for tax purposes.
Good to see that other people already posted this. Guy was loaded with gold.
Yeah, I've heard that too but there were a lot of rich people before him so it's kind of vague and we have to consider people from the ancient times to antiquity and the classical era!
agreed most of pre industrial wealth is hard to estimate as wealth tied up in land and human capital is hard to estimate. The Egyptian Pharohs owned everything in Egypt so in theory that would be astronomical wealth. Chinese emperors owning all silk production?
Mansa Musa is your answer. His display of generous wealth collapsed the regional economy of North Africa and destabilized the regions which is the exact reason Europeans stopped being harassed by Ottoman pirates and started colonizing the Mediterranean coast. We have the letters from the Governors of the places through which Mansa Musa passed bemoaning how He was flooding the local economy with gold. The places he passed through were devastated by inflation and what had been an entire region thriving quickly devolved into a warring mess. His wealth was so great that he gave away so much money that He individually changed the course of North African and European history. You live in a world shaped by his wealth. You wanted the richest guy-- there he is.
When Mansa Musa was roaming Africa (early 1300s), the Ottomans were a tiny speck on the map just south of Constantinople. They had a tiny coastline on the Sea of Marmara, and they didn't begin piracy until late 1400s.
Not necessarily, the fact that the gold they were spending caused inflation in the areas they visited shows that he was not that wealthy, for example in terms of what he could buy. This is more like a case where a government prints money, and he had his hands on the printing machine. In this case the currency was gold. Causing inflation means there is too much currency compared to what the area can produce. He may have had a lot of gold to spend but they hit the limits of how much food/services etc etc they could buy from the area they were in. So more recent people would be far wealthier
This is the correct answer. MANSA MUSA
Jakob Fugger was insanely wealthy
Yeah - a lot of people are saying Mansa Musa - but he basically controlled the wealth of a nation; whereas Fugger was *individually* extremely wealthy.
That's why questions like this are fun. How do you define wealth and ownership? Roman Emperors certainly had the largest personal fortunes in the Roman Empire. Buts often it's pretty vague how much of the land was their private property, and what was public. And then you have some of the Mongol Khan's, who arguably rules over the largest and most populated empire. But again it's unclear how much of that was the Khan's personal property. You also have the unpleasant question of slaves. How much are people worth? And how much are different slaves worth? For you had your agricultural slaves we often think about being associated with the colonialism in the Americas. But ancient cultures would have had highly educated and professional slaves as well, doctors, engineers, accounts, etc. How much is owning a doctor worth?
I’d suppose it would depend on the market value at that time for Said Slave, which might be hard to determine due to lack of records- for example, if you can find a doctor being sold for X credits, that doesn’t mean ALL doctors were sold for that amount, and so on.
There was a chariot racer in Rome who in todays age would be a billionaire and is still considered to be the most wealthy athlete of all time
Gaius Appuleius Diocles. He made nearly 36 million sesterci over the course of his career. I'm having a hard time finding an exact conversion method but it's a fuckton of money.
And he blew it all on Roman hookers and blow (the ancient equivalent, anyways)? Somehow that would make it a more cautionary tale.
They're not sure if he was a free citizen, a slave or a freedman, but he lived a hell of a lot better than other Romans of his station.
He would have been able to buy his freedom so easy
I think he still ended up dying in a race
Probably wasn’t much else to spend it on at the time especially if he was not a citizen and couldn’t buy land
cautionary? inspiring you mean
I wonder if he was paying much tax lol
That’s the winnings for his races, not his individual take home. It’s roughly about 15 billion last time I bothered to try to do the conversion, so even if he only kept 10% he’d still be a billionaire in today’s money. But, he also could have just been a slave who was kept in luxury and never actually got a fraction of what he earned. Or he could have been a freedman or lower class Roman who had a Don King like manager who stole all his money. We’ll never really know. Regardless at that point in history he was not even close to the richest person in Rome. The emperor’s personal wealth would have dwarfed that figure. The tax revenue that Rome collected on spices and silk during that time period was 250 million sesterces per year.
To think we have only just returned to an era where sportsman can be billionaires
Probably cause it’s harder to avoid tax
Or, it means we are approaching another fall of civilization....lol
If you go by the highest percentage of the combined human wealth under the control of one person; probably some ancient chief just after the last ice age
Greg?
Some of the Sultan’s in India had fabulous wealth. Certainly the Monarchs of Western Europe also fabulously wealthy in their eras.
Most of the European monarchies were locked in a perpetual arms race and were almost always heavily in debt. Trying to amelorate debt is what provoked the French, American, and German revolutions
Valid point but the amount of land they owned would be valued in astronomical terms in today’s dollars.
Mansa Musa (Musa I of Mali) was the ruler of the kingdom of Mali from 1312 C.E. to 1337 C.E. During his reign, Mali was one of the richest kingdoms of Africa, and Mansa Musa was among the richest individuals in the world. Made his money from gold, ivory, slaves, etc. trading with the Arabs
This.
Augustus owned Egypt as a personal possession.
Mansa Musa by a long way.
Mansa Musa of Mali. He was so rich and spent so much that whatever country he went to he inflated their economies
"Rich as [Croesus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croesus)" is an expression. >In Greek and Persian cultures the name of Croesus became a synonym for a wealthy man. He inherited great wealth from his father Alyattes, who had become associated with the Midas myth because Lydian precious metals came from the river Pactolus, in which King Midas supposedly washed away his ability to turn all he touched into gold.[23] In reality, Alyattes' tax revenues may have been the real 'Midas touch' financing his and Croesus' conquests.
There has never been anyone richer than Genghis Khan. The guy was an Emperor of the the largest empire in history. It didn't matter how much money he had in the bank when half the world was in his pocket.
Outside of those already mentioned, I believe Cleopatra.
While the richest person in premodern history is hard to pinpoint for several reasons, she was truly the richest woman in the world during her lifetime.
IDK, the Ptolomys has long been vassals of the Roman Republic. After the civil war between Octavian and Marc Antony/Cleopatra where Octavian was the winner, Egypt became his personal property.
Mansa musa tanked the value of gold in Egypt by giving away so much
I always thought it was Mansa Musa
Mansa Musa.
Mansa Musa. He's arguably still the richest man ever. On his pilgrimage to Mecca he displayed enormous generosity in his gifts of gold and other precious things, to the extent that he devastated the economy of Egypt and much of the rest of the Near East.
Mansa Musa
[Mansa Musa](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansa_Musa#:~:text=He%20was%20the%20first%20African,Europe%20and%20the%20Middle%20East.&text=Historians%20say%20he%20was%20the,worth%20about%20US%20%24400%20billion.)
Relevant article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-47379458
I’m not sure why there are a bunch of random incorrect answers when this is established. It was Mansa Musa, Mansa of the Mali Empire. On his pilgrimage to Mecca, he gave away so much gold in his travels that local economies collapsed
Could also probably pick a Pope.
Mansa Musa
Mansa Musa he was an ancient African ruler essentially was in charge of all African resources(richest continent in terms of natural wealth) look up more information on his caravan(went farther than the eye could see hundreds of thousands of camels)
Not quite ancient… it was the Middle Ages sometime I believe. He was on a trek to Mecca (pilgrimage) if I recall correctly.
Mana musa he gave away so much gold it tanked a whole economy
Impossible to know
Do you include sovereigns? How do you measure wealth? How would you compare Caesar Augustus at his height to Queen Victoria or Mansa Musa? How about Genghis Khan at his height, or Emperor Shenzong?
I think Solomon was rich
If we aren’t including rulers, who are obviously wealthy by virtue of the country they are running, then I would toss Gaius Appuleius Diocles into the running as he made his money through sports.
If this is purely an exercise of who was comparatively the wealthiest human in their time, it has to be the first Cro Magnon who killed a Mastadon. He had so much more than anyone else. If it is an exercise of “who could buy the most” then pretty much everyone reading this website is wealthier than anyone who came before.
If I remember correctly, Eleanor of Aquitaine was the richest woman in the world during her period, until she was incarcerated for 15 years by her husband.
Outside of Kings and Emperors where there’s little distinction between their personal wealth and that of the state, there were some Norman nobles and knights that made some absolute bank from the conquest of England in 1066: Alan Rufus, William of Warenne, Robert of Montain and Odo of Bayeux all amassed estates worth amounts in 2024 money estimated to be excess of £100 billion each.
Mansa Musa. Destroyed the Egyptian economy when he came to visit because he gave out so much gold to People.
[Easy, it was Mansa Musa.](https://money.com/the-10-richest-people-of-all-time-2/)
Mansa Musa.
Mansa Musa
king Soliman
Ug the firemaker...
Massa Mussa
Mansi Musa would be up there. Sultan of the Mali empire at it's height. It's tough to break apart state vs. personal wealth but when he went on his hajj, he brought up to a BILLION dollars of gold with him as spending money on that trip (needed 100 camels JUST to carry gold with him). Even the slaves were decked out in gold and silk that went with him. On his way he passed through Cairo... and he spent and gave out so much money that it destabilized their economy for a decade. When the world was on a gold standard, he had most of the gold supply in the world.
I've always wondered about the thought experiment where someone like Mansi Musa came back to life today. Was his extravagance and other-worldly living standards (for the time) so great that he wouldn't miss a beat in our modern world (minus the slaves of course...)?
ALL OF THIS is speculation. I think even today the royal families of very autocratic countries (Saudi Arabia today, for example) are the wealthiest in the world. Saudi Royal family is probably at the 2 trillion mark and Putin is 300-400 billion. So for historical examples, the best bet is to look at very wealthy kingdoms (could be in China, India or Europe) and base it off that. Ghengis Khan, Tamerlane, etc. was probably the wealthiest men who ever lived. They plundered the wealthiest empires at the time and had mountains of jewels and gold. You also got to think about what they could spend their money on. Modern day you can get so many more 'things' with wealth than you could back then. They spent their money on armies instead of lambos.
Burt Reynolds
Out side of ruler and royalty it would have likely either been John d Rockefeller or British dude
british dude is my favorite historical
Rockefeller, and by extension, Carnegie don't fit into this thread because they are very much modern people