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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (45719)	9/20/2002 5:29:18 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi carraanza2; (OT) The article on the cost of sowing Carthage with salt is inaccurate for the following reasons: (1) He's comparing the cost of ancient refined salt with the modern cost of rough salt. (2) He assumes that the fields sowed with salt corresponded to enough to feed everybody in Carthage. This is probably wrong because (a) like Rome, Carthage imported most of its food, and (b) Rome probably didn't even salt all the fields near Carthage. See: R.T.Ridley, "To Be Taken With a Pinch of Salt: The Destruction of Carthage" CP 81 (1986), 140-146 which notes it doesn't occur in any ancient source and goes back further than the CAH to Pope Boniface VIII. omega.cohums.ohio-state.edu:8080/hyper-lists/classics-l/99-07-01/0596.html If I had to make a guess, I would say that the "plowing salt into the fields" tale is a metaphor. -- Carl