“To be taken with a pinch of salt” 😂

Maybe salting the Earth was some sort of ritual to show that Carthage was indeed destroyed.

My history lessons made it sound like Carthage became a desolate landscape. But then I read The Confessions of Saint Augustine and learned that it was still a major city by 300 A.D. It just no longer had the power that it once had.

North Africa, specifically the area around coastal Tunisia was a major breadbasket of Imperial Rome, so even before I looked further into it, I always assumed the salting the earth was just an exegeration to show the destuctivness of the Roman sack.

Well for one thing they wouldn't have wasted the salt, salt was an important commodity. the Romans rebuilt Carthage and it was part of their empire for centuries after that, so salting the earth so nothing would grow there again would have been really dumb.

One of my favorite Simpsons exchanges is when Homer steals all of Flanders's flowers from his garden to decorate a float. Flanders says something like "I don't mind that you took all my flowers to decorate your float, but did you have to salt the earth as well?"

The equivalent phrase to salting the earth now would be to glass them. It was probably a turn of phrase.

Confused time traveller with AR-15 and platoon of marines: We're here for the peppering of Baalbek.

An interesting tidbit: here in Ireland we have something very similar to salting the earth but it works in reverse for us. We plough bog land with crushed lime to make it mimic arable soil. It goes from swampy marsh that can only sustain peat moss, reeds, and some root vegetables and forageable shrubs into actually usable farmland you can grow a range of edible crops in.

Roman soldiers, looking at millions of tonnes of salt: You want us to what

Thank you! Another boring truth: the Carthaginian "genocide" didn't happen. The Romans killed or enslaved the city's inhabitants, yes. But that was the usual fate of a city that forced a costly siege at that time (although they definitely did it with prejudice). But the Carthaginians' Punic identity, language and culture was spread right across the Western Mediterranean, and we know it survived. Punic was still the common tongue around the city in St Augustine's time (5th century AD). The supposed genocide is just a sensationalist and pervasive historical trope. It's like claiming all Romans were wiped out when Gaiseric or Alaric sacked the city or the Sicilian Greeks disappeared with Syracuse's fall - it ignores centuries of empire, colonization, and the simple fact that cities need hinterlands. If the Romans really wanted to expunge Carthage from the record, why didn't they rename it when they rebuilt it?

I never thought about it and took it for granted. But it is true, salt would have been too expensive for making the land infertile. Thank you for this video!

Have any archaeologists tested the soil around old Carthage?

I always presumed that's what the phrase meant. "Making the area virtually uninhabitable on a scale required for civilization" (interesting video tho, as always, to be clear)

*LOL. Setting aside the fact the reports of Carthage being salted didn't emerge until the mid-Nineteenth Century, the whole reason why Rome went to war with Carthage for the third - and final - time was to gain control of the rich, agricultural hinterlands around the city. This fertile farmland was the real basis for Carthaginian greatness, the key to its recovery after Carthage lost her empire at the end of the Second Punic War. The Romans taking control of this cornucopia just to turn around and sterilize it makes absolutely no sense, whatsoever.*

Most likely was that the romans used saltwater to salt the soil around the immediate area of Carthage as a symbolic act

salt was way too expensive in antiquity to use it for actual "salting" whatever they used, it was not actual salt

You learn something new every day. Thanks.

Maybe breaking down sea walls and/or pumping sea water into agricultural fields is a more cost effective way to salt the earth.

there is also the idea of salt having a purifying role and Carthage being in need of such action

Relating to the older bronze age civilisations, where would they get enough salt to render a significant amount of land infertile?

they probably salted like the top flowers in the main temple as a symbolic gesture and a long game of telephone later we got were we are

I always wondered where Roman got all the salt that would have been required to actually salt the land with salt. I mean, just think about how much salt would have been required and the logistics of getting it there and spreading it out over a HUGE area.

It's not boring. It's fascinating!

3:15 Future generations will remember the 19th century as the golden age of historical mendacity, followed closely by the 18th.

HC, a question about the Peloponnesian war. I have never heard about a Spartan attempt at attacking Athena's walls directly at any point during the war, they've roamed and pillaged the countryside just outside the walls. Have there actually been none or I am not aware of it? I know Phillip of Macedon had siege weapons, and that is not chronologically far apart and there were siege weapons in other cultures much earlier then that so this question itches me in a wrong way

"obliterated" vs "conquered and returned to nature as if it never existed" seems like the same thing to me

i've wondered about this salting because another factoid i've heard is that salt was so valuable people were paid with it, so it seems like a very expensive activity? would the latter method...the making of the ground more hospitable to weeds have also required tons of salt though?

Sounds interesting to me!

I once had to deal with weeds growing on the edges of my driveway and decided to use this method. Using bags of pool salt I applied so much that it sat on the ground like snow. The weeds came back within 3 months like nothing ever happened! It was no more effective than cheap weed killer. Which is probably why you never hear of gardeners using salt to kill weeds.

Wasn't salt used as a partial pay to Roman soldiers? (the word salary comes from salt) Not sure it would make sense to use it for the purpose of killing the soil.

Considering how expensive salt was throughout antiquity, the story makes sense as a way of saying the Romans were so ruthless in their ending of Carthage that they 'spared no expense'.

That last part about the simple logistics of getting enough salt to make the whole area desolate is what I asked my teacher long ago. And she just said "whatever, it happened." But the other big red flag to me is, how far did they supposedly salt the Earth? I mean, what if it was just the surrounding area? Nothing is stopping the people of Carthage just farming a couple miles away. Or importing food from one of their many colonies. I also feel like there could have been a way to "salt the Earth" by letting sea water flood the land. But again, why go to all that effort after you've just conquered something? The Romans could just use it themselves. And they did.

And wasn’t salt at the time extremely valuable? Would they want to use so much for this somewhat abstract purpose?

yea its from a 1848 book. the salting. or 1824?28?

I would have liked you to mention the value of salt as a commodity. Ive heard that aalt was extremely valuable in the ancient world

Could natron have been used in the biblical accounts?

Salting could come from intensive cereal agriculture at that latitude. Deep rooted plants keep the water table down. When the deep rooted plants are ripped up, the water table to rises, leaving salt on the surface of the productive ground.

I wonder if part of the reason the myth stuck around is that the destruction of Carthage and the associated economic/political structure was so complete that it was *as if* the city had been salted. Even the language of the Carthaginian people would die out.

What city is now?

Seems Romans did a pretty good job leveling Carthage without the salt. Can't imagine they'd waste that much money anyway, salt was pretty expensive stuff those days.

I think it did but not on the scale we think it happened, they might have done it just as a statement, statement that Augustus kinda never considered, add that to the fact that even if you do it is just like you said wilderness will take over, so maybe they did it but only for the important parts of the city

I always thought this was odd, considering the region would become an important source of grain and food for Rome later.

For anyone listening, I suggest giving Dan Carlin's "Punic Nightmares" series a chance. It covers this event in detail.

I salted my backyard with water softner salt I bought from Home Depot. Weeds didn't care.

I have all notifications from you on.

For the Romans salt was hard to come up with and expensive. Thus it is knowable in advance that any salting of the soil would be essentially symbolic. Not enough to do any sustained damage. If the available water was enough to farm, then no way they could put down enough salt on even a limited acreage to do permanent damage.

Considering salt was so valuable they literally paid soldiers with it I find it hard to believe it actually happened. Imagine a general nowadays giving some soldiers a 50k bag of diamonds each and telling them to spread them on the ground, that’s basically what ancient Roman soldiers would have saw the order of salting the ground.

I have learnd that they dind't salt earth in second punic war but the in third tell me if I am wrong and ceaser rebuild the citie next to the old

Carthage: "Hi-diddily-ho neighbor! I couldn't help but notice you picked all of my empire." Romer:"Cant have and empire without an empire." Carthage:"True enough, but did you have to salt the earth so nothing will ever grow again?" Romer:'Yeah." (NOTE: Carthage's wheat fields were fine in the next episode, to be Romer's breadbasket, but Hannibal died on the way to his home planet).

I just came back from Tunisia, and of course I visited Carthage. It was nice but the Roman structures such as Anthony's bathhouse were much better. If you visit Carthage, make sure to visit Sidi Bou Said as well, it's very pretty.

I think I heard somewhere that what actually happened was that Rome set aside a very small plot of land in or near the city of Rome that they “let” Carthage annex and then salted that small plot with salt as a symbolic gesture.

Perhaps Rome had salted soils used for gardens of the city rather than vast farm land in the region. The city might have been too large to destroy all the structures so after the defeat they simply spoiled the smaller gardens inside the city to keep people away from immediate re-settlement and over time Rome had build up local administration and authority over the area. You can see this today when a military takes over an area they may do things to prevent civilians from getting back in to some area by destroying access roads or paths, water and infrastructure overall.

I reckon salt would have been too expensive. And salting the earth probably meant having Roman citizens in Carthage...

It comes from the same bag as the story of soldiers in besieged castles throwing boiling oil at attackers. Considering how valuable salt and oil were... I don't think so.

One of the first unconditional surrenders imposed, general Patton saw himself as Hannibal

Thank you for your boring story.

Salt was valuable, as evidenced by the root of the word “salary”. Roman soldiers were paid in salt. So perhaps the Senate spend salt on soldiers who, after taking the city, destroy the local crops so the remaining Carthaginian’s are unable to feed themselves. From the perspective of the Rome, they salted the earth.

4:13 It looked better in 3 BC. They really should restore the area. Putin a museum and other culture facility, plus top notch resulraunts and cafes. It would create lots of jobs, bring people to the area etc. Hire me Tunisia, I'll take care of it.

SOOOO it wasn't pink Himalayan salt??? Ayeee first again!

Having visited modern Carthage I can confirm that there is plenty of plant life, & how does this fit with the phrase 'salt of the earth' as a positive idea?

We salt the earth here in the north all winter long and it seems to have no to little effect. The amount of salt it would take to make enough of a nations farmland unproductive to the point that the nation would be unviable would be cost prohibitive (effectively imposable) even to a modern superpower.

Wait, you're telling their actually were cities that were salted?! Not Carthage but some in the Near East... I do seem to remember that Mesopotamia had a lot of problems dealing with salt build up in their soil, possibly a side-effect of irrigation. Maybe it didn't take much effort there to ruin the soil for wheat.

The City became a Roman Colony under the aegis of the Gracchan reforms around 145 BC.

the geologist-archaeologist could, in theory, take soil core samples drilled down several feet and test them for layers of soil with a high salt content, could they not? Or, maybe they have done this before?

A more effective way of rendering vast areas uninhabitable is to deny the re-establishment of agriculture. The Romans could of made a commitment to a few generations of cyclical genocide on anyone who farms and to poison the wells and water sources. We can see some inadvertent techniques that give a similar result; For example, in the southern United States the lack of crop-rotation and multi-year cotton agriculture had so nutritionally-depleted the soil that it is unprofitable or difficult to grow crops. This is true to this day, even with the application of modern fertilizers.

It is a metaphore ....

Expensive thing to do back in the time period.

I dud a calculation with my son and friends about how much human effort would be required to truly "salt the earth" using sea water.. even if the entire Roman army spent a year doing nothing else, they wouldn't have made much impact!..I.e. you woukd need around 10-100 million litres of sea water per hectare to do it properly depending on rainfall levels. So a legion 10,000 strong carrying 150 litres of sea water each a day would manage to do a hectare in 1 year!

Carthago deledo est (or whatever) - soiunds like a literary device.

Salting the Carthage might have been used metaphorically, not literally as just meaning the city's destruction.

Was there a Battle of Zama? and if so was it as epic as described by the Romans or did they pump up the numbers for propaganda purposes?

Salting the soil to make it less fertile could barely be the case. In fact the area was still one of the empire's bread baskets and Carthage . Also, salt (as in NaCl at least) was much too valuable and fertile land was in high regards. Sack the city, enslave the population, romanize get the most out of the region. The Romans usually conquered to stay.

Quick note about pronunciation. In Semitic languages "ch" is pronounced more like "kh". Think Scottish "lach" instead of English "church". So "Shechem" is going to sound like "Shekhem".

So you can't tell us if it was salted or not - and if it was salted you can't tell us what it was salted with?

So they did do it. Just not as dramatically as it's hyped up to be.

Well, here’s the thing about salt in soil. It can be a pretty serious issue if you are short of rain fall or you have drainage problems. The thing is, 🙄 none of these problems are actually insurmountable. It’s possible that you don’t get the same choices of crops, it’s possible that some years might have to be “fallow” years but “salted” soil isn’t going to remain permanently unproductive. This actually makes the investigation of the historical events substantially harder. It really might have happened 🤷 we probably wouldn’t be able to tell anyway!

Pronunciation note: you'd do a better job pronouncing Shechem if you pretended it's written as "Shkhem". The "CH" in "Shechem" is not pronounced as it is in "Change". It's כ, which is pronounced in this context very close to the common Modern Hebrew Pronunciation of ח (the "incorrect" one). If you've ever heard an Israeli (or someone imitating one) say Hanukka, you'll know the sound I mean. As for the first "E" in "ShEchem", the common modern pronunciation doesn't commonly include it, and there's an argument over the original pronunciation, so "Shekhem" and "Shkhem" would both be fine - but "Shkhem" would be more recognizable to most native speakers. As always, thanks for the video!

"Salting" the earth of defeated enemies in the ancient world didn't entail literally salting thousands of acres. That would've been prohibitively expensive. What happened is that priests marked off a small area of the defeated enemy's land, salted that small patch, and cursed it as representative of the whole territory.

A metaphor for not letting Carthage rise again? 🤷🏻‍♀️

Carthage destruction is very similar to the site of Jericho’s (Aykent) genocide even the animals killed in Aykent apparently.

Well, thanks for ruining the memes!

The salt was salted just like how the legionaries never slashed with the gladius >_>

You're saying my grade school teachers and textbooks lied to me.😮

I never bought into that myth I mean, just considering the sheer logistics and pricetag of finding enough salt to spray on a whole city, that alone disproves it, no ? Salt used to be quite precious. The Romans didn't have the technology/production capability we have, to casually just use tons and tons like we spray on roads... I'm quite sure something like that could actually easily bankrupt the state. And beyond that, it's not like salt is that effective as a plant killer, especially long term. We spray tons of it each year during the winter months (so more than a One time event), and a lot of it ends up in the nearby vegetation. And yet, plant life still persevere, the roadside isn't a desert. I don't think the Romans thought anything like that would work... So at best, it would be a symbolic/religious event with a little salt being thrown...

In thousands of hours of research I never encountered the salting legend. Not sure why you're treating it like it's the main fact everyone knows about this topic.

Salt was too valuable to waste on some hyper revenge thing. Maybe they used saltwater or some mineral salt deposit. Salting in a wet weather climate wouldn't work for very long and let's be real, Carthage was on the sea so it's not like the soils were not a bit salty from its location.

I'm sure even the Romans sometimes employed metaphors.

The thing about salting the earth in Carthage is a conjured story of bragging by Roman accounts.Salt was too valuable in these times to be harvested and wasted on a new conquered territory and would have not served the long term interests of Roman rule in that region.

Just like Caligula appointing his horse as Consul, but it will be remembered while the truth is abandoned😒 Also I can’t remember if it was the Romans or the Israelites but after victory every soldier would pick up a stone and toss it in a field. An army’s worth of rocks ruins a field of agriculture and it may never recover depending on how few workers there are to begin removing them

If the romans had salted carthage, wouldn't regular rainfall have washed all the salt out by now?

A large city like Carthage would need a lot of farmland. How many acres and how many tons of salt?? I doubted that it happened to, especially as the Romans now owned it!!

The Roman, description of the siege and destruction of Carthage pretty horrific. I encourage you to seek it out and read it. (Polibius)

Well, Ashurbanipal 2nd said he salted the lands of Elam. Did he? If so how?

Primo, it’s too much salt is needed and it’s used to be quite expensive; Secundo, The Imperia needed taxes, so no, it wouldn’t destroy the source of income

Salt was very expensive back then.

I thought this was true. But I wondered because I believe salt was expensive back then. It was even a part of the Roman soldiers pay, I think!

In Roman times salt was expensive (used as preserver for meat's and other foods). Pouring expensive stuff over ground is idiotic.

Did anyone really think that they actually salted the earth?

As far as salting is concerned, I offer a simple metaphor that says we take some things, largely thought to be true or accurate "with a grain of salt". Literally no one actually does that with salt. So I'm thinking "salting the earth" in similarity; nobody literally does that in this grand context. Some have commented to what one might think to be contrarian examples but in those cases we are talking about practical uses, like, for example, we do add salt to our meals. We don't otherwise take our meals with "a grain of salt"...LOL...Or maybe you do!