Salary

By the time of the Roman Empire, ancient soldiers working for the realm were professionals, paid a reasonable wage for their time. Julius Caesar had recently raised everyone’s pay to 225 denarii per year.

It’s really tough to put that amount into modern context. The denarius was made of silver, but over time, the government debased the currency, meaning they put less and less silver in there in order to be able to create enough money to pay everyone. Unfortunately, this means the soldiers (and everyone else using the denarius) would lose purchasing power.

In other words, a denarius at the time of Romulus Augustulus, the last Emperor of Rome’s western portion, was worth a small fraction of what it had once been worth. Inflation over many centuries certainly took its toll on price stability in the Roman Empire, adding to the challenges the aging empire faced.

In addition to their regular pay, soldiers were also given a small allowance to buy salt. It’s also possible that they were given an actual bag of salt to keep with them while they travelled.

The little bag of salt (or the allowance) that each Roman soldier received was called a salarium—that’s where we get the modern word salary. Over time, people in Europe started using “salary” as a euphemism for something they would be paid for, and as language often does, that playfulness ultimately shifted the meaning of the word.

Why salt, you might ask?

It turns out that salt was very, very important in the ancient world. By rubbing salt on meat, fish, or vegetables, you could prevent food from spoiling.

There’s a filter on biological cells that allows the free flow of water, but not so much the free flow of salt. Naturally, water flows in to the more salty side of the cell, ultimately balancing the salt distribution. If you rub salt on the outside of food, it ultimately means the salt concentration inside the cell is now higher.

Bacteria really, really don’t like salt.

In addition to this, the food ended up being dehydrated, and you probably already know that dry foods keep much, much longer than wet foods, especially when you can’t control the temperature very well.

So, clearly, salt was important for health, and it was also viewed as hygiene. Wounds could be cleaned with salt, and besides, it made really awful tasting food much more tolerable.

There’s another thing about salt, too: it’s portable and standardized enough to be viewed as currency. Remember all that talk about inflation, and how the denarius lost most of its value? Well, commodities like salt can often be somewhat immune to this sort of fluctuation and value destruction.

This meant Romans could trade actual salt if the going got tough, and trade they did. It’s probably no wonder the word salary traces its origin back to something that became almost a form of money.

If you still haven’t gotten your salt fix for the day, I wrote this three days ago:

I almost never add any salt to my food, but there are visual reminders in the form of salt packets and salt shakers in restaurants, and whenever it snows, they put salt on the roads. The next time I see salt, I’m going to be reminded of why we have the word salary, and how valuable salt really was back then.

Did you already know how valuable salt was in the ancient world? What other sorts of things are valuable today, that might one day be taken for granted, the way we take salt today? Let’s talk!