the cost of a grill in the year 600

i had to go back to the salon this morning because my bro-zilian wax didn’t take. and while maiko poured boiling wax over my exposed gonads, i pored through more medieval royal decrees. this time it was æthelberht of kent’s laws from the year 600, the earliest written code in any germanic language.

æthelberht’s code established a series of fines for all kinds of personal injuries. here is what he thinks that your teeth are worth:

for breaking a man’s front tooth: 6 shillings
for breaking a man’s molar: 1 shilling
for breaking a man’s canine tooth: 6 shillings

however, æthelberht’s people petitioned their king saying that the molar is basically a double tooth and that it is very serviceable besides. the goodly king listened to his subjects and decided to raise the price of a molar to 15 shillings.

assuming the anglo-saxon dentists categorised the biscuspid as a molar, this means that if a rowdy saxon hooligan got into the age-old quarrel with his neighbour about who was a bigger hunk—the michael j. fox teen wolf or the jason bateman teen wolf—and busted every single last one of his teeth, he would owe him £4 and 12 shillings before æthelberht changed the law and (an astounding) £18 and 12 shillings after.

adjusted for inflation and the weakening pound, this works out to just about 78¢ in modern u.s. currency.