> Salt -> salary is well documented
Is it? At least for Roman soldiers there is no evidence at all that was the case. It just seems to be a myth originating in 18-19th centuries (like a lot of things in popular history).
Is it? At least for Roman soldiers there is no evidence at all that was the case. It just seems to be a myth originating in 18-19th centuries (like a lot of things in popular history).
It is somewhat documented, well documented perhaps.
Correctly documented?
I never finished the recent popular book 'Salt'. After a few chapters it became tedious, repetitive, plus the book consistently omitted tying text to sources. A frustrating read.
As I didn't in fact tie Salt to Roman soldiers' salaries, that was your reading, simply salt -> salary, I'm curious what references you could provide for different etymology? I'm genuinely interested, I rarely reply to replies.
Seem like a reasonable analysis:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/jfkkmk/when_...
https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2017/01/salt-and-salary.h...
tl;dr: There is a genuine linguistic connection between "salt" and "salary", but there is no evidence soldiers were ever paid in salt, or given an allowance specifically for buying salt. Possibly "salary" meant "money for salt" with "salt" used metonymically to mean any trade goods, similar to how "fish" was used in Ancient Greek, but even this is pure speculation.
Like a lot of historical things, there's a certain amount of guesswork involved, but it hangs together pretty well. It's unlikely that we'll find the Noah Webster of 100 BC who puts it down on a clay tablet.
It would only make sense if it was given to be used a store of value, but they had perfectly good coins to pay salaries with.
The Roman Empire towards its end in the west had suffered from a lot of inflation, so coinage was either too expensive for everyday use (i.e. gold-coins, each of which would be a year's salary for a soldier), or worthless (basically just lumps of base-metal).
I think at a certain point taxes were required to be paid in goods rather than coin which really does show that your currency is worthless (when even the state refuses to accept it!)
Paying out salaries in cash (well, coins) so soldiers can buy trade goods like salt certainly makes more sense than handing them sacks of NaCl.
It’s not unlikely that the connection between these were was already merely etymological by that time and made barely any more sense to the Romans as it does to us.