Pepper as currency
The long history of pepper used for rent, tribute, dowry and ransom.
Also: peppercorn rent, pepper as money, worth its weight in pepper
Pepper was once valued enough to serve as money. Roman writers record it as a luxury, and when Alaric the Goth besieged Rome in 408 CE he reportedly demanded 3,000 pounds of pepper as part of the ransom. Medieval Europeans paid rents, dowries and taxes in peppercorns, and the legal term peppercorn rent, meaning a nominal sum, persists in English property law. Guilds of pepperers existed in London from the twelfth century. The price dropped as sea routes opened in the sixteenth century, and pepper became an everyday seasoning. It still holds the title of the most traded spice by volume in the world.