The AFU and Urban Legend Archive
Language
Etymology
 salt salary




From: tindall@mercury.interpath.net (Bruce Tindall)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Salary (Was: Help! "Salt of the earth")
Date: 24 Sep 1994 13:25:42 -0400

John Woolley <jww@evolving.com> wrote:
>Someone wrote:
>: In Roman times, wages were often paid in salt. Hence the term "salary".
>
>This is one of those bits of bizarre misinformation that gets
>copied from place to place.
[Quote from Cassell's Latin Dic deleted]

The OED more or less agrees with Cassell's: "money allowed to Roman soldiers for the purchase of salt." If that's "misinformation," then what *is* the correct information? I'm perfectly open to documented alternative explanations, but the "salt as pay" or "pay specifically for the purchase of salt" explanation is not only widespread in authoritative publications, but is also plausible.

The importance and high value placed on salt in ancient times (partly for its role as a food preservative) is evident from sayings and proverbs ("You are the salt of the earth," etc.) from the Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, and Persian traditions.

More recently, an important episode in Gandhi's struggle against the British Raj was his symbolic violation of the government's monopoly [I think -- somebody help me out here?] on salt in 1930: he went down to the ocean and illegally made salt by the traditional method (which, if I recall correctly, was to soak cloth in sea water, let it dry, and then scrape off the residue).

Because of its importance to daily life I can believe that Roman soldiers would not necessarily turn up their noses at salt as at least an occasional or supplemental method of payment.

You might want to post your question to sci.classics too.

B "in vino veritas^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hseveral contradictory but equally valid culturally-conditioned viewpoints" T


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