[zhte415]

The article also mentioned the beer ration could be passed to families.

Which had me thinking of various pecuniary benefits armies pass and why. Salt -> salary is well documented, on the opposite side slightly less so but still somewhat known was for conquering armies to compensate farmers for essentially pillage as the monetary compensation can't buy much grain nor meat when the army's eaten the village's as well as that of surrounding villages. It also wasn't unusual for state coffers to run dry also, delaying soldiers' salaries, plus graft - several banks still around were founded on the basis of lending to a liquidity starved crown, a modern placation and guarantee of support in the classical baronesque sense perhaps.

And I became curious about all the other money-like tokens, like these beer rations, backed by the promise of a commodity, that floated around in those time, and in ours today. Meandering thoughts, the best kind.

[ffhhttt]

> 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).

[zhte415]

Your [citation please] got me looking. https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/7159/etymology-of-... ; Google Scholar seemed to provide some references in a search for 'salt salary etymology'.

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.

[ffhhttt]

I mean the words might be related but I don’t think there is any evidence that soldiers were actually paid in salt?

Seem like a reasonable analysis:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/jfkkmk/when_...

[zhte415]

Fascinating, thanks. Not just for the salt, but the trail and narration. Saved, and saved the old.permalink... to the Wayback Machine just in case.

[mrob]

Here's a detailed analysis with reference to primary sources:

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.

[deltarholamda]

Salt, and salt-derived commodities (salt-cured fish, vegetables, meat) were major sources of income for societies and governments for quite a long time, so the etymology correlation probably has some legs.

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.

[coldtea]

Doesn't make sense either, as you can't do much with salt except use it on food as seasoning or as a preservative, which are both useless as salary since you still need to pay for your actual food and other expenses.

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.

[NeoTar]

> 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!)

[resolutebat]

It's well documented that the word salarius is derived from salt, it's just very unclear why.

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.

[ffhhttt]

> It's well documented that the word salarius is derived from salt, it's just very unclear why.

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.