The word “salary” is often said to come from Roman soldiers being paid in salt.
But Roman sources do not confirm any such payment; it is most likely a pretty folk etymology.
More amazing facts
- 146 BC The Romans did not sow Carthage with salt.
- 146 BC After destroying Carthage, the Roman Senate paid to translate one Punic book: Mago's 28 volumes on farming.
- 100 BC · 1901 The oldest known analogue computer is over 2,000 years old. The bronze gears of the Antikythera mechanism predicted eclipses, and nothing as intricate was built again for more than a thousand years, until medieval astronomical clocks.
- 100 BC · 44 BC Julius Caesar was almost certainly not born by caesarean section.
- 51 BC · 30 BC Cleopatra was not Egyptian: her Ptolemaic dynasty was Macedonian Greek.
- 50 BC Roman soldiers were not paid in salt.