19 ms·
Salt and salary: Were Roman soldiers paid in salt? (2017)
- tomaytotomato 3y ago"Salarium Argentum" - salt money (or money/allowance towards salt) It would be funny to see my payslip with a tex deductable section saying "Salt allowance". Imagine if modern day employers paid their employees in other things rather than currency that were tangibly valuable (would be chaos I am sure).
- ipsum2 3y agoYou might find a SALT deduction when filing taxes.
- c54 3y agoWe have things like a fitness stipend, wellness stipend, learning stipend… all with cash value earmarked towards a specific use.
- earthboundkid 3y agoUgh, don't get me started on how HSAs and FSAs are just a handout to the financial industry.
- Detrytus 3y agoMy mom worked as an accountant for a big meat-processing factory and she was partially paid in their products: meats and sausages :) Also, coal mine workers in my country used to get few tons of coal once a year (useful for heating their homes in winter). Unfortunately, for tax purposes your employer is supposed to calculate a cash value of those bonuses, so you don't actually pay your tax in sausage.
- toyg 3y agoEx-wife worked in a brewery and had a weekly beer allowance. She didn't drink, so she'd pick it up once every 4 months and give it to her ecstatic flatmates.
- hef19898 3y agoStill part of union negotiated salaries for brewery workers in Germany. Since almost all breweries also have non-alcoholics, that part of the payment is aparebtly more often taken in the form sparkling water and the likes. I can vividly imagine your wife's flatmates joy once a quarter so!
- Turing_Machine 3y agoI think it's also common in candy factories. New employees tend to eat a lot, but after the first week or so consumption declines considerably.
- nradov 3y agoIn the former USSR, jobs in meat processing and sausage making plants were desirable because even though wages weren't very high the workers could steal a lot. This was so normalized that they didn't even think of it as stealing, it was just "carrying out".
- SXX 3y agoCarry from the factory every nail. You are the owner here not a guest. (c) Rough translation of USSR joke.
- nemo44x 3y agoA lot of people get paid in part with stock options that don’t even have tangible value necessarily.
- joshspankit 3y ago> Imagine if modern day employers paid their employees in other things rather than currency that were tangibly valuable As highlighted in other comments, this happens all the time. For example there are huge tax benefits to getting paid in “non-taxable” ways.
- ant6n 3y agoOr suddenly there’s sales tax on top of the income tax.
- lr4444lr 3y agoLike stock options? Yeah, even that is contentious.
- throwaway167 3y agoCentral bank digital currencies where the currency can be spent only on certain goods, and can be set to expire.
- doctoboggan 3y agoSounds exactly like health insurance.
- the_mitsuhiko 3y agoFun fact: there is a beer allowance (Haustrunk) in Austria if you a work in a brewery. And that allowance is tax free.
- Qwertious 3y agoThat sort of thing makes more sense than you'd think - if people earn money at a brewery, spend money on beer, and handle decisions about large amounts of beer on a daily basis then it encourages them to perhaps find an excuse to 'spoil' beer then take it home. If everyone gets a ton of free beer anyway, then most people won't be tempted to nick some booze. Making it tax-free makes some sense, because nicking the booze is also tax-free.
- 0xDEADFED5 3y agobased on the breweries in the USA i've visited, it's very common here, too. i somehow doubt it's because all the employees would otherwise be beer thieving criminals, though.
- GeoAtreides 3y agoMany countries have meal (food) vouchers besides salary: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meal_voucher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meal_voucher [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/793aud/are_meal_vouchers_common_in_your_country_if_yes/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/793aud/are_meal_...
- pferde 3y agoFrom the article: "Later on, Scheller and Freund realised that Pliny didn’t say what Facciolati-Forcellini claimed he did, but they liked the idea so they instead supported it" I wonder, how many historical so-called facts are similarly based on a whim of some historiographer or other? We should take everything with a grain of salary... I mean, salt. :)
- newsclues 3y agoNot just history, but any field of study. Trusting experts is a problem, because experts are human.
- toolz 3y agoI believe life is most pleasant when you choose to err on the side of trusting experts, but there is something quite amusing (to me) that programmers have "cargo culting" and if you write code and deeply invest in any community you'll meet experts all the time that do things just because others do them, but then you'll meet someone in another highly trained field and just trust what they say is all evidence based. It's rather curious how many high skill professions seem to default to trusting others based on their credentials.
- toyg 3y agoThe problem is that, as soon as you hit moderate complexity, validating claims becomes difficult, time-consuming, and full of traps. Are you going to microscopically analyse every sausage you eat? If not, how do you trust that it's safe? Experts.
- toolz 3y agoI get what you're saying, but I also understand that poses it's own problems. Just because trusting the experts is the best we can do, does not mean that it doesn't sometimes come with significant consequences. History is littered with people abusing their expert status to maliciously achieve some goal. The first example that comes to my mind is the Tuskegee experiment, where the US public health service and CDC allowed 100 of the 400 men in their study to die, refusing to provide them with treatment for syphilis and preventing them from getting treatment by other means, so they could study the men. They also never revealed to those men that they had syphilis.
- jdjdjdkdksmdnd 3y agoi think the topic of salt is misunderstood. ancient people didnt eat as much and they worked more and harder and also didnt have access to air conditioning. sweating more would deplete electrolytes and entering into dietary ketosis frequently would lead to a major decline of electrolytes. i think ancient people needed salt because they would get sick without it. but eveyone says its because they liked the taste
- qwytw 3y ago> ketosis frequently Considering their diets, which were very high in carbohydrates (not sugars though) compared to modern diets that seems highly unlikely. Can you actually ever enter "ketosis" if you're mainly eating bread and other grain products? > i think ancient people needed salt because they would get sick without it. but eveyone says its because they liked the taste They needed salt because there weren't that many other ways to preserve food. I doubt this has much to do with taste. Also modern people need salt too.. > ancient people didnt eat as much That's debatable. According to our records medieval people did sometimes eat quite a lot. I guess the problem is that it varied a lot. You either had too much or to little food all of the time.
- jdjdjdkdksmdnd 3y agoancient rome and medieval europe are really different. you can enter ketosis every day on a diet of carbohydrates by eating one or two times a day, eating less or engaging in exercise would make that ketosis deeper and longer. all of this could have applied to most people until relatively recently.
- Wytwwww 3y ago> ancient rome and medieval europe are really different Why? Of course Northern European had different diets (e.g. lard instead of olive oil etc.) but on the Mediterranean cost diets weren't that similar. > you can enter ketosis every day on a diet of carbohydrates by eating one or two times a day So being on the brink of starvation all the time? Does not seem sustainable. > all of this could have applied to most people until relatively recently Highly unlikely. What makes you think that was the case?
- aurizon 3y agoRome had a growing problem - the lack of fiat currency as the reserves of silver and gold were exhausted. They had to find alternates. They tried debasement(adding lead/zinc/copper( but that created the early quick tests. Same now. We have so little gold that going to a gold backed method in circulation = gold would wise to $20,000 more or less per ounce at which point sea water extraction is economic. (currently it costs more to pump 1 ton of water over a 2 foot hill that the value of the gold therein)
- qwebfdzsh 3y ago> They had to find alternates. Except they didn't use salt for that. That's a myth. Did you read the article? > the lack of fiat currency as the reserves of silver and gold were exhausted. True, they had the same problem in the middle ages. Since we know massively more about the middle ages than Ancient Rome AFAIK they partially solved it through a mix of barter and credit (accounting was done using currency bit might have never changed hands in reality). As long as most trade is local that must be a pretty effective system.
- aurizon 3y agosupplies, like salt, grain, etc were used because often there was not enough silver on hand = get salt etc - better than nothing and you can sell as you travel
- qwebfdzsh 3y agoSalt was very bulky (less so than grain of course) but I don't think it made a very good medium of exchange. Shipping goods on land especially was extremely expensive. .e.g according to Diocletian's price edict (so the prices themselves are probably not accurate due to inflation by ratios might be) a laborer could afford to buy ~7kg of salt for his daily wage. Salt was supposedly very cheap, actually the same price as grain by volume. So it really wouldn't have made much sense to drag bags of salts with you just to sell it for pennies (salted meats or fish etc. probably would've have been a much better option).
- Nik09 3y agoShould start a gold standard salary, a possible substitute to Roman era
- empath-nirvana 3y agoThere are lots of slang words for wages today that have to do with food: "cheddar", "cabbage", "dough", "bread" "bacon" -- maybe future etymologists will assume that we were paid in bread and cheese.
- throwaway1492 3y agoI never understood the "salt scarcity in antiquity" idea. As in they could just use a splash brine water from the sea if you physiologically need salt. And transport sea water inland as needed.
- ponector 3y agoMain purpose for salt was good preservation. That's why it was extremely valuable.
- jvanderbot 3y agoAbove comment said it was not scarce, not that it wasn't valuable.
- ponector 3y agoIf it is not scarce - the value is low.
- whoknowsidont 3y agoBreathable air is pretty valuable, at least for me. And it's definitely not that scarce on this planet.
- qwytw 3y agoWell it was. Supposedly it cost about the same as wheat by volume (and salt is ~50% more dense). So it was dirt cheap.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
- deusum 3y agoWe're still finding roman coins in the UK, that should be enough physical evidence against the idea. But, I imagine salt would be useful for bartering with some of the "barbari" the soldiers encountered.
- Ekaros 3y agoOn other hand UK being island next to Ocean, a local salt production must have happened for long time. As such I'm not entirely sure the locals would have needed to source it from Romans. Then again if Romans took over the production it changes things.
- joenathanone 3y agoFrom my research ‘Salt’ meant fool, ‘salt of the earth’ is like a ‘bless your heart sort’ of matter. The implications for Salary would mean that the soldiers were being fooled by accepting what they were given as payment. They also say the Lord works in mysterious ways.
- kouru225 3y agoI think the author goes a little too far here in equating the monetary value of salt with how valuable salt was. Salt had serious religious and mythological value. In nearly every single culture salt is said to ward off demons. Salt was used in courting rituals where new couples would process their love by licking the same salt rock. In some cultures, salt was part of the burial process. There isn’t a single salt production site in the world that isn’t named something like “salt place” or “place where the salt comes from.” Sure, the fact that salt was involved in all these traditions and rituals probably indicates that salt was generally available to most people, but clearly it was still very important to them. If you’re wondering why salt was so mythologically important, just go over to your counter, put some salt in your hand, lick it, and try to imagine how you’d describe the taste to someone who’s never tasted it before. You can’t. Salt is its own thing and there’s nothing else like it.
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoThat’s true of every flavor.
- tsimionescu 3y agoNot sure that it really matters one way or the other, but all other taste buds are triggered by a whole class of substances, not just one or two. Any sugar is sweet (sucrose, fructose, even lactose), as are a bunch of other compounds (aspartame and the other artifical sweeteners). Any acid is sour. Savoriness/umami is caused by any compound containing glutamate. Bitterness is harder to pin down, but there are many compounds which trigger the taste. However, saltiness is not actually limited to NaCl. The part that triggers the taste is the Na ion, and other similar ions actually trigger the same taste - KCl is the most common, but compounds from Li, Rb, Cs, Ca can all trigger salty tastes.
- vlz 3y agoPossibly, but just because there is a lot of scattered evidence for salt being used in religious/ritualistic ways over the ages, doesn't mean it was important everywhere for that reason and at every time. I like the article for sticking to the textual evidence we have and concluding "we don't know" instead of speculating. However if you have anything concrete on the religious meaning of salt in Ancient Rome that would be interesting.
- nonrandomstring 3y agoSalt tablets were issued to anyone marching long distances in hot conditions, as recently as Vietnam and Korea. Modern rations have "isotonic" packs. As for wages of ancient soldiers, the Greeks (dunno about Romans) took spoils, including women and slaves.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoSalt is necessary for anyone who's producing a lot of sweat. The alternative is that you run out of salt and die. This is also why Gatorade is salted.
- massifist 3y agoWhile I do appreciate historical accuracy, I find this news very disconcerting! And here I was hoarding all this salt, hoping for our return to the salt standard. :-( Well ya can't win em all! And at least I'm not on a low sodium diet.
- xiconfjs 3y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli... "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
- darkclouds 3y ago[dead]
- HarHarVeryFunny 3y agoYet again confirming the pattern that when the title of an article is a question, the answer is "no".
- Huppie 3y agoBetteridge's law of headlines strikes again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
- alentred 3y agoMy unscientific take on this issue: 1. According to the "Pay in the Roman army", Wikipedia [0]: in 235AD, a legionary was paid about 1350 denarii per year. 2. I cannot find the price of salt in Wikipedia, but according to the "Roman goods prices" [1]: in 301AD, price of salt was capped to 100 denarii for about 17 liters of salt. It was capped because of inflation, so it is reasonable to assume it was not higher in 235AD. This means that in salt, a legionary would have to be paid with around 230 liters of salt per year. If paid weekly, it's about 4.5 liters of salt per week. If the numbers are correct, this is indeed completely unrealistic. No one needs 4 liters of salt per week, a legionary wouldn't carry 8kg of salt on top of his equipment, and where would all that salt come from? This raises many more questions for centurions, who had roughly 30 times bigger salaries. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_(Roman_army) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_(Roman_army) [1] https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/roman-economy/roman-goods-prices/ https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/roman-economy/roman-goods-pric...
- gregw134 3y agoThe centurions were only paid double what soldiers were during the Republic era. Interesting their pay jumped to up to 30x during the empire.
- gattilorenz 3y agoBecoming emperor and outliving the job are mostly dependent on the support of the army at that point, right? If so, it is not so surprising that the wages went way up…
- qwytw 3y agoMainly for the officers though. Of course kind of makes sense considering conscription became a lot more common in the later periods.
- gregw134 3y agoYeah that's what I figured. Julius Caesar marched on Rome with a hired army, then after his death Marc Antony and Octavian kept having to bribe their soldiers to fight and not switch side. Sounds like the army and leaders established an unhealthy precedent.
- hulitu 3y ago> Salt and salary: Were Roman soldiers paid in salt? (2017) Education system failure.
- pfannkuchen 3y agoIs there any chance that pay was specified in an amount of salt but paid in currency? I.e. to peg to the value of salt, which would be useful if the currency was unstable.
- rurban 3y agoOf course not. They were paid in coins, and after duties in land and citizenship. Land was the most important factor. There is extensive original literature on Roman soldiers, I've read a few by myself.