Salt and spices

Salt and spices are diametrically opposed goods, which mirror each other in terms of uses and mode of fruition, origin, availability, trade dynamics, and economic value. While salt was used primarily as a condiment to flavor and preserve food and was enjoyed through the sense of taste, in the Greek world spices served mainly as ingredients for perfumes, cosmetics, and drugs, and as aromatic substances to burn in rituals for gods and other ceremonies, and thus were enjoyed through the sense of smell. Salt was a common and therefore relatively inexpensive commodity in the ancient Mediterranean, traded mainly at the local and regional level; by contrast, spices were out-of-the-ordinary goods that moved along transcontinental trade routes and, as such, had a high economic value. Nevertheless, both salt and spices allow one to reconstruct, in a complementary way, some elements of the cultural landscape of the classical Greek world. On the one hand, salt belongs to the Mediterranean environment and has always been part of the cultural background of the Greeks; on the other hand, spices such as frankincense, myrrh, cassia, and cinnamon, although belonging to faraway lands, out of the reach of most Greeks, by the classical period, thanks to economic expansion and the intensification of trade networks, had become part of the cultural horizon of most Greeks, catering to the demands of wealthy elites as well as broader segments of the population.