Our pay is called a 'salary,' but were Roman soldiers really paid in salt?

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Every other Wednesday, like clockwork, my salary arrives in my bank account. By Thursday, most of it is gone.

Recently, as I contemplated its biweekly appearance and disappearance, I started thinking about the origin of the word "salary." As a historian of the ancient Roman Empire, I often think about the modern legacy it continues to have. It's a common belief that the English word "salary" derives from the Latin word "salarium" because Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in actual blocks of salt. Sal, the Latin word for salt, also turns up in various other salt-related English words, from saline to salami.

While it's an attractively neat idea, there are some significant problems with this theory. Here's what we actually know about how Roman soldiers were paid. There's strong evidence that salt was a valuable and widely used commodity in the ancient world.

For a society without modern refrigeration, it played an important role in food preservation (particularly for meat and fish). It was also portable, so it's not surprising that the idea of soldiers being paid in salt caught on. Peter Gainsford, a New Zealand-based classicist, points out that the English word "salary" does indeed derive from the Latin "salarium," which translates to "stipend or money allowance." But Gainsford argues that while there is a link between "salarium" and "sal," the Latin word for salt, there is no evidence this link is because Roman soldiers were paid in salt.

The evidence we have suggests Roman soldiers were paid principally in coins, especially silver coins. Roman silver coins often contained images with military themes. Coins depicting Fides, the goddess of good faith and mutual trust, and the term "fides militum," meaning "loyalty of the soldiers," were among the most common.

The ancient Roman historian Livy claimed the Roman state took responsibility for the regular pay of soldiers in 405 B.C. Livy doesn't tell us the amount, only that they were now paid by the state. This payment was called the "stipendium"—from which the modern word "stipend" derives.