Salarium[edit]
Similarly, the Latin word salarium linked employment, salt, and soldiers, but the exact link is not very clear. This link goes back to the Roman historian Pliny the Elder, who stated as an aside in his Natural History's discussion of sea water, that "[I]n Rome. . .the soldier's pay was originally salt and the word salary derives from it...".[4] More modern sources maintain instead that although Roman soldiers were typically paid in coin, the word salarium is derived from the word sal (salt) because at some point a soldier's salary may have been an allowance for the purchase of salt[5] or the price of having soldiers conquer salt supplies and guard the Salt Roads (Via Salaria) that led to Rome.[6][7] Some people even claim that the word soldier itself comes from the Latin sal dare (to give salt),[citation needed] but mainstream sources disagree,[8][9] noting that the word soldier more likely derives from the gold solidus,[10] with which soldiers were known to have been paid[citation needed].
Roman empire and medieval and pre-industrial Europe[edit]
Regardless of the exact connection, the salarium paid to Roman soldiers has defined a form of work-for-hire ever since in the Western world, and gave rise to such expressions as "being worth one's salt".[1]
Within the Roman Empire or (later) medieval and pre-industrial Europe and its mercantile colonies, salaried employment appears to have been relatively rare and mostly limited to servants and higher status roles, especially in government service. Such roles were largely remunerated by the provision of lodging, food, and livery clothes (i.e., "food, clothing, and shelter" in modern idiom). Many courtiers, such as valets de chambre, in late medieval courts were paid annual amounts, sometimes supplemented by large if unpredictable extra payments. At the other end of the social scale, those in many forms of employment either received no pay, as with slavery (although many slaves were paid some money at least), serfdom, and indentured servitude, or received only a fraction of what was produced, as with sharecropping. Other common alternative models of work included self- or co-operative employment, as with masters in artisan guilds, who often had salaried assistants, or corporate work and ownership, as with medieval universities and monasteries.[1]