Salt use on Cato's farm...

[Iynx]

I happened to be reading in old Cato-- not our friend from Chicago, I mean old Cato--when I came across the following (De Agri Cutura 58); the context is the provisions for the field-hands:

Salis uni cuique in anno modium satis est.

Say what? If a modius is 8.7 liters, and salt is 1.3 times as dense as water (both reasonable approximations, I think), that's more than 11 kilos of salt per year, or about 31 grams per day. Even allowing for the hands' wives and kids and old invalid mothers, that's an awful lot of salt. Or were they expected to do something with the salt besides eat it?

 

[cinefactus]

Could it be for salting meat and fish to preserve them?

 

[Decimvs]

Garum?

It surely functioned as a preservative. Was there any religious rituals that may have involved salt?

 

[Iynx]

I wouldn't have thought that the hands would have any meat or fish of their own to preserve. They seem to be dependent upon the dominus for their sustenance...

 

[Decimvs]

Maybe they wanted it on hand for trading purposes. Or maybe it was something that was expected to not be as readily available one day, so they figured that they might as well get a lot of it, just in case they could not get as much the next season or something.

Is there anything written about the regularity of the salt-mining trade, or the average annual yield from the mines? It seems reasonable to think about it that way. For instance, I have way more cans of corn in my pantry than I really need, but it is just one of those staples that you keep buying more of when it is on sale because it keeps for so long. Perhaps there is a similar thing at work with the salt?

Salt seems like something that you really would not want to run out of in those times.

 

[cinefactus]

I don't think that the elder Cato was one to keep things that he didn't need. He writes how he gets rid of anything he isn't using, including old or sick slaves.

 

[Decimvs]

I don't think that the elder Cato was one to keep things that he didn't need. He writes how he gets rid of anything he isn't using, including old or sick slaves.

Not to be arbitrarily argumentative, but I think my point still has a certain amount of validity. Like you say, he didn't keep things that he didn't need.....so that means that he really needed salt. In the case that salt was not available, it would be important to have a stockpile. A utilitarian probably doesn't mind hording something that has such great utility as salt.

 

[mortuivivosdocent]

I think the answer of trade is probably right. It was a highly valued commodity, and if you didn't want it for your food you could trade it for other products or services.

 

[Akela]

I remember something about Romans liking way spicier than average taste. Something to do with lead leaking into their food from all of their cooking vessels.

Perhaps, salt here is just another way to add strength to the taste of their food? A habit for consuming large amounts of salt is no picnic - here I can speak from experience. If you run out of salt, or start getting lower amounts of it - all of your food seems completely and utterly tasteless. Not as terrible as eating sand would be, but not too far off either.

Anyway, I would like to give another vote to stocking up.

 

[Zombye]

I happened to be reading in old Cato-- not our friend from Chicago, I mean old Cato--when I came across the following (De Agri Cutura 58); the context is the provisions for the field-hands:

Salis uni cuique in anno modium satis est.

Say what? If a modius is 8.7 liters, and salt is 1.3 times as dense as water (both reasonable approximations, I think), that's more than 11 kilos of salt per year, or about 31 grams per day. Even allowing for the hands' wives and kids and old invalid mothers, that's an awful lot of salt. Or were they expected to do something with the salt besides eat it?

I think you overestimated the salt density a bit. For coarse salt(elder Cato, right?=) it is about 800 grams/litter. So it will come to 19 grams per day. The recommended salt consumption is 6 g/day, average US one is 9 g/day.

 

[Iynx]

Aha! So that salt was much less dense (0.8 /1.3) than the salt I know? That goes a long way towards explaining the thing. Thank you Zombye!

 

[Zombye]

So that salt was much less dense (0.8 /1.3) than the salt I know?

I am not sure if I understand the question correctly, but 1.3 is the density of salt cake, i.e. salt, which was not ground. If you take ground salt, then the average density depends on the size of the grain. The smaller the grain the closer the density will be to salt cake density.
I thought that, may be, salt that Cato was talking about was not very well grounded down, and so the grains were quite coarse, and the average density of the bucket of such salt quite low.