Salty Circumstances

As someone who focused much of my undergraduate research on the natural science of antiquity, I was overjoyed to see this minor digression into the formation of salt pans.  Namantius' description of the drying of the salt pans ends with his apt observation of how the sun can responsible for both creating liquid from solid (through the melting of the ice) as well as leaving behind a solid remainder through evaporation (namely, the salt flats created from the briny sea). Although this process may seem fairly mundane by today's standard, Namantius' description is actually drawing on a long tradition of natural science in Latin literary tradition, whose authors themselves drew extensively on the Greek philosophers.  Here are a few examples of the similar passage from earlier Latin authors with date and translation

Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, 1st century BC, VI (trans. Rouse, 1992)

Principio terram sol cxcoquit et facit are
at glaciem dissolvit et altis montibus altas
extructasque nives radiis tabescere cogit

In the first place the sun bakes the earth and makes it dry
but it melts ice and with his rays compels
 to thaw snow piled up high on the high mountains

Here Lucretius is dealing specifically with how certain particles have the same effect on matter, exactly what Namantius mentions in his work

Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 1st century AD, XXXI.73 (trans. Bostock and Riley, 1855)

Sal omnis aut fit aut gignitur, utrumque pluribus modis, sed causa gemina, coacto umore vel siccato.  siccatur in lacu Tarentino aestivis solibus, totumque stagnum in salem abit, modicum alioqui, altitudine genua non excedens

All salt is either native or artificial; both kinds being formed in various ways, but produced from one of these two causes, the condensation or the desiccation, of a liquid. The Lake of Tarentum is dried up by the heat of the summer sun, and the whole of its waters, which are at no time very deep, not higher than the knee in fact, are changed into once mass of salt.

Again Pliny, although solely concerned with the "creative" aspect of the sun, observes the process by which the sun evaporates the water and leaves behind the salty remnants.

Aristotle, Problems, 4th century BC, XXIII.18

Why is salt water not drinkable when it is cold but more drinkable when it is heated, when it is hot
and when it is cooling ? Is it because it is natural for it to change from one extreme to the other ? Now the drinkable is the opposite of the briny ; and the brine is boiled out when it is heated, but is precipitated when it grows cold.

Interestingly enough, one of the earliest accounts of the creation of salt deviates slightly from the others as here, while the salt is cast out of the water with heat, it is not until it is cooled before the precipitate forms.  Therefore, perhaps later authors such as Pliny, Lucretius and Namantius are drawing on the slightly different tradition of natural science than Aristotle

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