[HN Gopher] Salt and salary: Were Roman soldiers paid in salt? (...
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Salt and salary: Were Roman soldiers paid in salt? (2017)
Author : throwaway167
Score : 97 points
Date : 2023-12-29 10:34 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kiwihellenist.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kiwihellenist.blogspot.com)
| tomaytotomato wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| You might find a SALT deduction when filing taxes.
| c54 wrote:
| We have things like a fitness stipend, wellness stipend,
| learning stipend... all with cash value earmarked towards a
| specific use.
| Detrytus wrote:
| My 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 wrote:
| Ex-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 wrote:
| Still 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| In 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".
| nemo44x wrote:
| A lot of people get paid in part with stock options that don't
| even have tangible value necessarily.
| joshspankit wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Or suddenly there's sales tax on top of the income tax.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Like stock options? Yeah, even that is contentious.
| throwaway167 wrote:
| Central bank digital currencies where the currency can be spent
| only on certain goods, and can be set to expire.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| Sounds exactly like health insurance.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Fun fact: there is a beer allowance (Haustrunk) in Austria if
| you a work in a brewery. And that allowance is tax free.
| pferde wrote:
| From 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 wrote:
| Not just history, but any field of study.
|
| Trusting experts is a problem, because experts are human.
| toolz wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| blowski wrote:
| It's why pluralism is so important, where experts hold
| each other to account. It's worrying when not believing
| some dogma causes you personal problems.
| hef19898 wrote:
| That behaviour is morally beyond bankrupt and racist.
| Doesn't mean the people involved were or were not experts
| in their fields so.
| tim333 wrote:
| I'm happy eating sausages in the UK but less so in say
| Nepal. No experts involved, just a look at the shops.
| hef19898 wrote:
| All things considered, Nepalese meat is propably saver
| than industrial one. After all, the remains seen on the
| sreetside are from the same day, meaning whatever meat
| you buy was still alive in the morning.
| tim333 wrote:
| Having eaten in both places and gotten ill in Nepal I'm
| skeptical. He's a pic of a typical meat shop there. https
| ://c8.alamy.com/zooms/6/445bf76d991f4c27a9b88318955c2e3..
| .
|
| and uk https://www.ballardsbutchers.co.uk/sites/default/f
| iles/style...
|
| note differences in cleanliness, refrigeration and so on.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The issue is not the meat, it's the dust. Properly
| washing it before cooking takes care of that. Vegetables
| are no different in that regard.
| toyg wrote:
| Without stringent laws, drafted with experts, your "rule
| of looks" wouldn't be worth the bits it's written on.
| cf1241290841 wrote:
| You cant actually trust that its safe to eat, you just
| like the idea and act accordingly. And deal with the
| consequences of the uncaught error cases. Tainted food
| still occurs.
|
| At best you can be confident / trust that a product is
| created in a given process which manages certain risks
| through certain means.
|
| Also, finding faults in said process is a lot easier then
| coming up with it or executing it. Be it making a sausage
| that is unlikely to make you sick or coming to an expert
| judgement with sufficient confidence to act on.
|
| It doesnt require the ability to validate a process to
| find it faulty, you just have to detect an error case
| occurring that isnt dealt with.
| paleotrope wrote:
| "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as
| follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some
| subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine,
| show business. You read the article and see the journalist
| has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the
| issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents
| the story backward--reversing cause and effect. I call
| these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of
| them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement
| the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to
| national or international affairs, and read as if the rest
| of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine
| than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and
| forget what you know." -- Michael Crichton
| yonaguska wrote:
| Usually, the cost of doing something the wrong way as a
| programmer is minimal compared to say- a doctor or a rocket
| scientist. There's not really a governing body on how to do
| things, as in actual engineering- and most of the work we
| do is under the constraint of time. saving time means
| deferring decisions to others. I personally find that
| there's a lot of value in sifting through and examining the
| myriad of opinions on a given subject, and coming to your
| own conclusion, but in the professional world, this a
| luxury for but a few.
| tim333 wrote:
| Experts plus common sense and direct evidence I think
| works. Experts sometimes come out with complete nonsense,
| especially if there's politics involved.
| newsclues wrote:
| Trust but verify.
|
| Asking experts to provide rationale for their decisions
| should be welcomed by experts.
| hef19898 wrote:
| All the people I consider experts I ever encountered,
| where more than happy to explain their rationals. I
| learned a shit ton of things listening to them.
| cf1241290841 wrote:
| I would argue its over relying on complexity management
| solutions, so less a problem of experts but the inability or
| unwillingness to live with degrees of uncertainty and manage
| your confidence/trust accordingly.
|
| The whole expert thing becomes really problematic once people
| start making circular arguments to justify their existence
| and then promptly overrely. So the perceived necessity or
| benefit of having an expert means there has to be somebody
| you can trust. Which you then promptly overdo without
| functioning checks and balances.
|
| Expertise cant stem from demonstrated conviction and cant
| require trust, thats is describing religion and Ponzi
| schemes. You arent doing experts any favor by treating them
| as such, at best they still all have incomplete expertise and
| cant shoulder your reckless levels of trust.
| cies wrote:
| And this is quite an irrelevant fact. How many people
| know/remember that the US faked an attack on it's fleet on
| August 4 to join the Vietnam war?
| hef19898 wrote:
| The Tonkin Incident. Well, Wikipedia has a decent enough
| write up of the whole Vietnam War, including the French one,
| including Tonkin.
|
| The problem is less that those crucial facts are not know,
| but rather that they get ignored in public discourse.
| cies wrote:
| Exactly! Same for the --benign-- roman wages in salt story.
| It will get ignored.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And than all kinds of people will use that bit for all
| kinds of weird theories.
| cies wrote:
| That do not harm a million Iraqi or Viet civs.
|
| Plenty of groups believe/ promote all kinds of "weird
| theories". As long as they are harmless I dont care. The
| moment it involves cutting baby penisses or promoting
| hate I'm voicing myself out against.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The cutting baby penisis remark was totally uncalled for,
| and can be seen offensive.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident
|
| One real attack August 2, one confused incident where
| actually no attack happened.
|
| It's kind of true but really it's hardly a false flag
| operation
|
| (paraphrasing and being kind to US administration - US Navy
| breached territorial waters, exchanged fire on Aug 2, then on
| Aug 4 they fired upon radar returns and possible signals
| traffic. The second time there was no actual North Vietnamese
| and the Navy expressed doubts but US administration wanted to
| escalate and both incidents became conflated. It's not the
| same as for example pre-planned false flag operations. Is
| there a fine line? Yes. exactly where that is is hard to say.
| cies wrote:
| I'd say knowingly trying to claim an attack that did not
| happen is --not a false flag-- but certainly a govt
| conspiring to deceive "the people".
|
| Not sure what's worse.
|
| And see the result: how many dead Viets? I recently heard a
| US TV anchor say "all civilian deaths since WW2" (they
| meant to say "US civ deaths").
|
| The Iraqi WMDs were a similar hoax to get "involved". I
| never trust a word 3 letter agencies again: professional
| lairs with zero accountability.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I didn't read the above to mean "Knowingly trying to
| claim at attack that did not happen". I read it as "We
| aren't sure there's someone there, but please just shoot
| anyway we need to be aggressive", and political officials
| portrayed that as "Attack" without proof.
|
| These are congruent accounts with different
| interpretations, and I tend to believe public speakers
| are opportunistic spin doctors, not world-shaping
| conspirators.
|
| As for "never trust a 3 letter agency", that's quite an
| extreme viewpoint. CDC? EPA? FBI? CIA? NSA? All of them
| do good, even if their findings can be spun ( or are even
| directed to be spun ).
| cies wrote:
| > CDC? EPA? FBI? CIA? NSA? All of them do good
|
| What do you think is the good? Maybe the FBI to some
| extend (my point was quite a hyperbole I know). But under
| the line they mostly do bad imho. And they spin their own
| "findings", that's how we got into this conversation.
|
| I the plan was to invade Vietnam/Iraq, and the attack are
| propped up to "allow" then to invade. If you think they
| govt was deceived by it's own speakers, that to my is
| quite a stretch... The plan was to invade, and the story
| was made to match. That is a conspiracy in and of itself.
| genman wrote:
| And when Communists took power in Vietnam then exactly
| what was expected to happen happened - a large scale
| human tragedy with mass killings and torture and mass
| exodus.
|
| Saddam Hussein was a mass murderer who had murdered
| around 400 000 people - half of them after US refused to
| take him down after the Gulf War. Any excuse to get him
| removed was a good one.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The right time to take down Saddam was after the secind
| gulf war, the first one with US participation. In the
| first gulf war between Iraq and Iran, Iraq was an US
| ally.
|
| And no, removing Saddam with good reason was a really bad
| idea...
|
| To cut it short, in the frame on the war on terror 4.5
| million people died, almost a million directly related to
| the war and 38 million people displaced. If you think all
| that was a just price to pay to get Saddam and Bin-Laden,
| because the Taliban pretty much won, you should re-adjust
| your moral compass.
| genman wrote:
| Why should I readjust my moral compass? Because people
| could not forget their feuds and started to kill? The
| system held together by terror was pushed out of
| equilibrium. They had a change to find a better one but
| they chose not to. If anything then US has done not
| enough by letting sociopaths in Syria and Iran still run
| the show - a huge part of the deaths (I'm not going to
| dispute your claimed numbers) could have been averted and
| not only in Middle East.
| ilovecurl wrote:
| If you are ever in the Seattle area, you can tour one of the
| destroyers that was involved in that incident, the USS Turner
| Joy, which is docked right next to the ferry terminal in
| Bremerton.
| narag wrote:
| _How many people know /remember that the US faked an attack
| on it's fleet on August 4 to join the Vietnam war?_
|
| BTW, have you heard of the Maine?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| One of my favorite ones is that the entire idea that any
| ancient population ever believed that the Earth is flat seems
| to come from a semi-fictional biography of Columbus from the
| 18th century.
|
| Somehow people just read an interesting book and decided that
| their great-grandparents all believed on that stupid thing.
| bombcar wrote:
| The sad thing is it obscures the real issue people were
| bringing up with Columbus - they said the world was much
| larger than he thought so he would starve and die before
| getting to the indies.
|
| They were right, too, as the size of the planet was pretty
| accurately known. He just lucked out that someone had left a
| continent for him to run into.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Didn't he also never reached the continent, just some
| islands, which then were used as a starting point for more
| expeditions?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| No, he definitely reached Central and South America. But
| even until his death he had insisted he had reached the
| East Indies.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Ah, according to Wikipedia, he only reached the continent
| on his third and fourth voyage. On his first two
| expeditions, he was only cruising around the Bahamas,
| Cuba, etc.
| runeofdoom wrote:
| I think I recall that his grants from the Spanish crown
| (and part of his fame) were tied to him having made it to
| the East Indies. So there would have been motivation for
| him to stick with his stories.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Define ancient. We do know that cultures from 2000+ years ago
| believed in a flat earth. There is enough proof for this, and
| Ancient Greece and Romans discovered this to be wrong. But
| independent of this, there is also the claim that people in
| medieval Europe believed in a flat earth, again, and this was
| brought up as a reason why Columbus expedition would fail
| when he searched for supporters and ships.
|
| And in fact, such stories are not that uncommon at the 18.
| Century. Thinkers and scientists were fighting against the
| church, and they made up many fake stories to show how stupid
| and dangerous the church is. And AFAIK the church believing
| in a flat earth was one of them.
| whiddershins wrote:
| For example, many people today believe that we only use 10%
| of our brain.
|
| But it wouldn't be fair to say that's what our "culture"
| believes to be true.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| It is true in the sense that we only use about 10%, at
| any given time, for some definitions of percent. People
| just fail to understand that the other 90% is just not
| useful, rather than unused potential.
| spigottoday wrote:
| That is news to me and interesting. Do you have a
| citation or link to share?
| srinivgp wrote:
| "people only use about 2% of the volume of their house at
| any given time"
| Ekaros wrote:
| Is it even usable at same time? There is some level of
| plasticity, but in general certain parts activate for
| certain tasks and you can't really make it use more parts
| at one time.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > We do know that cultures from 2000+ years ago believed in
| a flat earth.
|
| There are plenty of cultures from 2000+ years ago that
| never bothered thinking about the shape of Earth. I don't
| know of any that did bother and decided it was flat (and
| would really like a pointer), even though I do know of some
| ambiguous texts that people keep interpreting as that, but
| are much better explained as they not caring about the
| shape.
|
| It's quite hard to do astronomy on a larger area than a
| single city and not discover the planet isn't flat. And it
| looks like people have been exchanging astronomic findings
| over some longish distances for longer than they have been
| writing texts that we can read today.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > There are plenty of cultures from 2000+ years ago that
| never bothered thinking about the shape of Earth.
|
| For those, we don't have any kind of indicator what they
| believed about earths shape, so why do they matter?
|
| The way you phrased your comment indicated that you kinda
| believe that now one at any point in early history really
| believed in a flat earth, and it's all just a story made
| up later.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Half this comment section is saying that.
| Zancarius wrote:
| > I don't know of any that did bother and decided it was
| flat (and would really like a pointer)
|
| Semitic cultures very much believed the Earth was more or
| less a disc-like shape that consisted of the known world
| (mostly in their sphere of influence, if you pardon the
| expression). But they also had some other ideas, like
| that of chaotic universal waters above and below the
| Earth, separated by the firmament, and supported by
| pillars (though you can see this idea changing somewhat
| by the time the book of Job was written). This is a theme
| that is repeated in Genesis, Isaiah, Job, and one or more
| of the Psalms.
|
| Not coincidentally, it's fairly well established in the
| scholarly literature that _this_ was the view of ancient
| Near Eastern writers, and it wasn 't until Young Earth
| Creationists decided to apply a degree of scientific
| concordism to the text where we get a more distorted view
| of Hebrew words like _hug_ inferring something other than
| a disc or circular inscription. It 's true that they
| probably didn't care so much about the shape (unlike us),
| but their cosmology is definitely inferred rather
| strongly in the biblical texts (and in some cases from
| their neighbors). John Walton's "Lost World" series on
| Genesis are a good pointer in this direction, but I'd
| also suggest the IVP Bible Background Commentary (Walton
| is a contributor) which certainly touches on this motif
| and draws upon other creation accounts such as those in
| the Ugaritic tablets, Baal Cycle, etc. The late Dr.
| Michael Heiser has a great lecture series you can find on
| YT talking about biblical cosmology that might help if
| you're into that format.
|
| The link with Columbus was indeed perpetrating a myth.
| You get this as recently as Ray Comfort's "Evidence
| Bible" which is filled with complete buffoonery in that
| it attempts to explain Columbus' motives based on his
| mention of Isaiah; YECs like Comfort link this to Isaiah
| 40:22 (again, with an incorrect reading of _hug_ ).
| Columbus was motivated by his eschatology and the only
| reason he ever cited Isaiah was because of its dual
| function as prophetic-apocalyptic literature.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Thanks. Those people seem really interesting.
|
| They were right on the way when the idea of popular
| astronomy (instead of only god-appointed people doing it)
| reached Europe, and yet they seem oblivious from it.
|
| It's a really good reminder that even on the era of large
| empires, culture was still very fractally distributed.
| lehi wrote:
| Chinese astronomical records were extensive, accurate,
| and continual for more than 3000 years. They believed the
| Earth was flat and square until the 17th century.
| genman wrote:
| If you read a story about the edge of the world then you
| have an example of an "flat earth" believer.
|
| Regardless of shape, I think the most fundamental shift
| occurred with the idea that the Earth is not a center of
| the universe.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Earth at the center of the universe was one, the sun
| turning around earth another. The latter so was known to
| be most likely true for a long time by everyone who
| worked on astronomy.
| russdill wrote:
| People thought Columbus's voyage would fail precisely
| because they believed the Earth to be a sphere and thus the
| distance from Europe to India was too far to traverse.
| Columbus tried to convince everyone it would succeed by
| claiming the Earth was instead pear shaped.
|
| https://sacred-texts.com/earth/boe/boe26.htm
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _One of my favorite ones is that the entire idea that any
| ancient population ever believed that the Earth is flat seems
| to come from a semi-fictional biography of Columbus from the
| 18th century._
|
| See also the religion-science conflict thesis, which was
| popularized by Draper and White:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_thesis
|
| > _My guests today are David Hutchings and James C.
| Ungureanu, co-authors of_ Of Popes and Unicorns: Science,
| Christianity and How the Conflict Thesis Fooled the World.
| _David is a physicist, science teacher and writer and James
| is a historian of science and religion. In this interview we
| discuss their book and the origin and impact of the Conflict
| Thesis - the pervasive but erroneous idea that religion and
| science have always been in conflict down the ages._
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkfA4v8cwYM
| jdjdjdkdksmdnd wrote:
| i 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| aurizon wrote:
| Rome 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| Nik09 wrote:
| Should start a gold standard salary, a possible substitute to
| Roman era
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| There 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Main purpose for salt was good preservation. That's why it
| was extremely valuable.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Above comment said it was not scarce, not that it wasn't
| valuable.
| ponector wrote:
| If it is not scarce - the value is low.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| Breathable air is pretty valuable, at least for me. And
| it's definitely not that scarce on this planet.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Yep. Some combination of drying, salting, and smoking was
| pretty much it.
|
| No refrigeration. No freezing. No canning.
|
| They used a _lot_ of salt.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think in that statement the "extremely" carries way too
| much weight.
|
| As it would imply price to be very high. Which then would
| mean that regular people would not have access. But they
| also widely used salt. So it could not have been extremely
| valuable as we understand. Or maybe gasoline is extremely
| valuable commodity now...
| ponector wrote:
| Yes, you can compare it with today's oil trade.
|
| Salt production and trade have been restricted, usually
| state-owned monopoly. Cities with salt mines like
| Salzburg became extremely rich, like oil countries today.
|
| Is gasoline valuable? Yes. Is affordable? Yes, but not
| for everyone. Same with salt back than.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Transporting water from a well is already a pain in the neck.
| You think they're going to transport bulk seawater deep
| inland just to make their food soggy?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| No, but it's very easy to make the seawater into salt and
| then transport the salt.
| rex_lupi wrote:
| Also "Peanuts"
| Hayvok wrote:
| No doubt the phrase "bring home the bacon" will outlive our
| civilization and future historians will confidently assert to
| one another that we were all paid in rashers of bacon.
| geodel wrote:
| I wonder was that because bacon slices looked like currency
| notes? Or maybe crisp currency gave good feeling like the
| crisp bacon?
| breischl wrote:
| Tangentially, this makes me think about how much recently-
| introduced slang is for basically-random reasons like "it
| happened fit well into the rhyme and meter of a popular
| song" or "somebody attractive/famous said it" or "it sounds
| cool and kids' parents hate it".
|
| Maybe there's a good reason for the bacon thing, or maybe
| some guy just tended to buy bacon on payday. /shrug
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Phrasing can matter. Here's a lyric from the song "Kilkelly":
|
| _Because of the dampness, there 's no turf to speak of
|
| and now we have nothing to burn._
|
| This sounds a bit less serious to modern American ears than
| it should. We think of winter as being annoying, not
| _dangerous_.
|
| In China, where a common word for wages is Xin Zi -- "fuel
| and resources" -- people are more likely to intuit that going
| without fuel is best not attempted, even though they've never
| experienced it either. It makes for an odd example of poetry
| coming across better in translation than it does in the
| original language.
| deusum wrote:
| We'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 wrote:
| On 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 wrote:
| From 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Salt 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 wrote:
| Salt 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.
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