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==Roman Salarium==

Our discussion on ''salarium'' clearly says that Roman soldiers were not paid in salt -- a common error -- and that a ''salarium'' was probably not even a "salt allowance". This is based on Gainsford's blog "Salt and salary: were Roman soldiers paid in salt?", which is very convincing and well-argued, with references to primary sources. And besides his very good blog series, Gainsford also publishes in traditional journals.[https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/p/about-me.html] But for such strong claim, in the face of overwhelming amounts of misinformation even in reputable sources, it would be good to have additional sources. Any ideas where to find them? --[[User:Macrakis|Macrakis]] ([[User talk:Macrakis|talk]]) 16:35, 21 July 2022 (UTC)
==''''Etymology''''==
: Yes, I originally added the blog entry as source, for the reasons that you stated and agree that it's provenance means that it is not totally satisfactory. The best additional source that I have found is the following brief note in John L. Myres "Ancient Groceries" ''Greece & Rome'' Vol. 22, No. 64 (1953), pp. 1-10 at p. 5: "Salt came easily from the ubiquitous sea, under so strong a sun, and was traded, like fish, far inland, till it met the rock-salt, mined in Salzkammergut since very early times... the earliest and typical 'allowance for expenses' was the ''salarium'' 'salt money', like the customary charge for 'condiments' in the battel-bills of Oxford colleges" [[User:Furius|Furius]] ([[User talk:Furius|talk]]) 17:03, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

::If I read Gainsford correctly, there isn't even evidence for the 'salt money' theory. Myres' paper is a lecture for the general public (written in 1910!) and the statement has no source, ancient or modern. If it was a line item in a soldier's pay, I'd think it would show up in some ancient account-book.
The etymology previously read:
::To be clear, I find Gainsford's article convincing, but it would be nice if it were corroborated by additional, stronger sources, or even reviews of Gainsford's article in good journals. --[[User:Macrakis|Macrakis]] ([[User talk:Macrakis|talk]]) 20:37, 21 July 2022 (UTC)
:'Salari' derives from the [[Greek language|Greek]] root ''sal-'',< !-- http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/roots/zzs00400.html meaning [[salt]]-- >
:::Myres' article is a modified version of the lecture, published in ''Greece & Rome'', which is one of the higher prestige journals in the field of ancient history. It remains common in the field to cite articles from the first half of the 20th century. Myres is not saying that ''salarium'' was money for salt, he's saying, like Gainsford, that the term literally means "salt-money" but was a general "allowance for expenses" of all sorts. There will not be reviews of Gainsford's post in journals. I didn't realise that you wanted a source for the existence of the ''salarium'' in ancient times. There are plenty of sources ancient and modern for the ''salarium'' as a line item and discuss how much it was - e.g. Daniel Peretz "The Roman Interpreter and His Diplomatic and Military Roles" ''Historia'' 2006, Bd. 55, H. 4 (2006), pp. 451-470 at 453, but such documents don't explain what the salarium ''is'' (in the same way that modern receipts record how much [[VAT]] was paid but don't say what VAT is)... There's also this [https://www.google.de/books/edition/Veni_Vidi_Vici/8cWtAAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=salarium+Roman+army&pg=PT22&printsec=frontcover ] [[User:Furius|Furius]] ([[User talk:Furius|talk]]) 22:15, 21 July 2022 (UTC)
but this appears to be a misinterpretation of the yourdictionary entry. This is the entry for the Indo-European root 'sal-', which ends up as 'sal' in Latin, but 'hal' in Greek. 'sal-' is ''not'' the Greek root for salt, it is the ''Latin'' root. --[[User:Macrakis|Macrakis]] 7 July 2005 20:00 (UTC)


There was a bit of an edit war on the question of whether the value of salt in medieval barter was etymology and whether it was relevant. I decided that it was rather History, and at first included it there. But on further consideration, it seemed to be that knowing that salt was used in medieval barter was just a weak way of reinforcing the point that people had at some point been paid with/for salt. It seemed to me that the real support of salt-for-work needed to be established in Rome or earlier if it was to be relevant. That's what inspired me to include the pre-Roman reference in Ezra 4:14. In this way, we could establish that salt as pay was a very old/strong concept that the Romans adopted --[[User:KevinCuddeback|KevinCuddeback]] 15 July 2005


I also ultimately agreed salarium might be in the etymology of "worth one's salt" is but that it doesn't work the other way around: being worth' one's salt did is '''not''' the origin of the word [[salary]] but rather an interesting/notable historical '''byproduct''' of salary's origin. I included "worth one's salt" in the history as a way of solidifying the salt-salarium-work connection before going on to the more relevant discussion of the evolution of salaried work--[[User:KevinCuddeback|KevinCuddeback]] 15 July 2005


There is a legitimate dispute on what the origins were of ''salarium'' itself. None dispute that ''salary'' comes from ''salarium'' and that ''salarium'' comes from salt's use as payment for work. Pliny was not a particulary careful historian, and was no etymologist. He was writing well after the time that soldier's pay may have switched from being "of salt" to being paid in a ''solidus'' coin "for salt". Pliny happened to be writing about water in general as part of a science book (his ''Natural History''), and had gotten to the topic of sea water in particular, which got him onto the topic of salt and he happened to digress into noting the apparent (to him) relationship between salt and soldier pay. But while he came down on one side of things, others make a strong case for other meanings of a payment of/belonging/attributable to salt--[[User:KevinCuddeback|KevinCuddeback]] 15 July 2005

: So was there a decision to remove the etymology? I see it deleted now. [[User:Poweroid|Poweroid]] 14:48, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I reverted the deletion. The etymology should be there. Bascially everyone who has studied salary since Pliny has been intrigued by it. The anonymous IP from which the deletion occurred looks like it has a history of warnings and blocks, so I think it is fair to ask for a better reason from a more reputable source before giving up etymology. [[User:KevinCuddeback|KevinCuddeback]] 15:19, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

==Links==

Obviously there is a bit of an edit war in the last few versions around a determined effort to get Myplan dot com into the links section. I should disclose something that affects my POV, namely that I am a manager at Salary.com. I try to take off my work hat when writing here, and its a terrible dilemma on the appropriate wiki way of handling the links for this article. Back when I edited the links section (in a very early incarnation), I tried to create as diverse a set of english-language salary sites as possible. At that time, one issue was that a previously-relevant Australian site is now just a plain old job board (if they ever had salary data, it was gone/hidden when I looked). Admittedly, myplan.com is new (to me) and I did not include it at the time. I think the issues with Myplan will be threefold: first the lack of candor on the part of the posters in the link section and second the apparent laying on of SEO keywords in the description (Free and Salary and Calculator, which is essentially what all of the other sites are too, so I'm not sure it is neutral to have descriptions for the one and not the others). It would definitely be the case, however, if one was trying to improve Myplan's search engine ranking, that one would agonize over the position an inclusion of the word "free" (or at least I would). The third issue would be that Myplan is essentially republishing US Bureau of Labor Statistics data (albeit in a much handsomer format) so I don't know the wiki preference for duplicative sources if one happens to be a very cool reworking (in Myplan's case) of a very dull US Government site (the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in this case). Until someone with greater candor and a more neutral POV can characterize the sites linked, I think it better if they have no characterizations beyond country of relevance [[User:KevinCuddeback|KevinCuddeback]] 23 October 2005

Here we are, 1.25 years later and the commercial spam links are still a problem. Disclosure: As noted above, I still work for Salary.com, the world's leading site on salary. You'll also note that I was able to maintain a [[WP:NPOV]] while writing much of the article as it still exists today. The most sincere wiki-community approach to links seesms that either a large list of links should be here (with serious thought as to how much value they add) or none, save the most neutral, like the US BLS should. The practice, however, of anymous addition of single, low-value links with an obvious commercial self-interest pages violates the [[WP:NPOV]] policy. I removed the "blogspot" link just now because it was clearly a low-value link (like a tip calculator, basically) with high-value Google Adwords all over it. I don't see how promoting that link is neutral--the editor has a direct money-per-visitor interest in promoting that link. [[User:KevinCuddeback|KevinCuddeback]] 14:06, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I removed all but two, and did so in steps to clarify why and for easy revision. --[[User:Ronz|Ronz]] 02:51, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Latest revision as of 19:24, 24 September 2024


Archives (Index)

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Roman Salarium

[edit]

Our discussion on salarium clearly says that Roman soldiers were not paid in salt -- a common error -- and that a salarium was probably not even a "salt allowance". This is based on Gainsford's blog "Salt and salary: were Roman soldiers paid in salt?", which is very convincing and well-argued, with references to primary sources. And besides his very good blog series, Gainsford also publishes in traditional journals.[1] But for such strong claim, in the face of overwhelming amounts of misinformation even in reputable sources, it would be good to have additional sources. Any ideas where to find them? --Macrakis (talk) 16:35, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I originally added the blog entry as source, for the reasons that you stated and agree that it's provenance means that it is not totally satisfactory. The best additional source that I have found is the following brief note in John L. Myres "Ancient Groceries" Greece & Rome Vol. 22, No. 64 (1953), pp. 1-10 at p. 5: "Salt came easily from the ubiquitous sea, under so strong a sun, and was traded, like fish, far inland, till it met the rock-salt, mined in Salzkammergut since very early times... the earliest and typical 'allowance for expenses' was the salarium 'salt money', like the customary charge for 'condiments' in the battel-bills of Oxford colleges" Furius (talk) 17:03, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If I read Gainsford correctly, there isn't even evidence for the 'salt money' theory. Myres' paper is a lecture for the general public (written in 1910!) and the statement has no source, ancient or modern. If it was a line item in a soldier's pay, I'd think it would show up in some ancient account-book.
To be clear, I find Gainsford's article convincing, but it would be nice if it were corroborated by additional, stronger sources, or even reviews of Gainsford's article in good journals. --Macrakis (talk) 20:37, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Myres' article is a modified version of the lecture, published in Greece & Rome, which is one of the higher prestige journals in the field of ancient history. It remains common in the field to cite articles from the first half of the 20th century. Myres is not saying that salarium was money for salt, he's saying, like Gainsford, that the term literally means "salt-money" but was a general "allowance for expenses" of all sorts. There will not be reviews of Gainsford's post in journals. I didn't realise that you wanted a source for the existence of the salarium in ancient times. There are plenty of sources ancient and modern for the salarium as a line item and discuss how much it was - e.g. Daniel Peretz "The Roman Interpreter and His Diplomatic and Military Roles" Historia 2006, Bd. 55, H. 4 (2006), pp. 451-470 at 453, but such documents don't explain what the salarium is (in the same way that modern receipts record how much VAT was paid but don't say what VAT is)... There's also this [2] Furius (talk) 22:15, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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