Scipio sowing Carthage with salt

[Epictetus]

I was just reading Mary Beard's blog on the Times website and came across this remarkable little statement (emphasis mine):

The other guest of honour was the man who had been Frank's Director of Studies when he was an undergraduate, Betrand Hallward (the first Vice-chancellor of the University of Nottingham, and the man who almost certainly invented the myth that Scipio ploughed salt into the fields when he destroyed Carthage -- see Classical Philology 1986).

I never knew that the source of the sowing-fields-with-salt myth had been identified, much less that the myth was only thirty years old! (This seems strange to me - I could swear I've read about the myth in sources older than this.)

I've been trying to find the article in Classical Philology online, but to no avail.

Does anyone know anything about this?

[M. Demetrius]

Myth or not, my dad (who is a history teacher) told me about the salty fields when I was around 8 or 10. That would be 48 to 50 years ago. So it would have been written at least a couple of years before that, to have been in books already.

[Epictetus]

After some creative googling, I came up with something.

From an online food encyclopedia (of all places!) I found this:

History
The Romans didn't actually plough the ground of Carthage with salt. They did raze the city in the spring of 146 BC, under Scipio.

Berthold Georg Niebuhr (1776-1831) started the idea in his book "History of Rome" that Scipio had Carthage not just razed, but ploughed. B.L. Hallward (1901 - ), in The Siege of Carthage (Cambridge Ancient History Vol. VIII, published between 1924 and 1939), sprinkled in the salt for good measure. Hallward was probably drawing on biblical imagery from the Book of Judges (9:45). At the time, salt was worth more than its weight in gold. Romans may have been pissed at Carthage, but they weren't stupid. The Carthaginian (or "Punic") Wars had already cost them a fortune as it was.

Within the past year I just reread this CAH, but I had borrowed it from a library and don't have it handy. So doing some more googling with this new information I found this one purported quote:

Buildings and walls were razed to the ground; the plough passed over the site, and salt was sown in the furrow made...A solemn curse was pronounced that neither house, nor crops, should ever rise again.

B.L. Hallward. The Siege of Carthage. Cambridge Ancient History Vol. VIII.

[Timotheus]

At best I could imagine that after the city was razed some ceremony was held where a handful of salt was thrown at the city while a Roman cursed the place.

But seeing as how the Romans rebuilt the city later into a pretty large one and the area around became a bread basket of agricultural production there is no real indication that more was done.

[griffin]

I can add some hearsay to this discussion.

One of my university professors told me once, that he spoke with the author of CAH. He asked him about the salt, and he basically confessed that he just made it up. Maybe he thought the account needed some to "spice" it up?

[Tarbicus]

There's a discussion on Wikipedia which also questions the veracity of the story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Salting_the_earth

The main page does have some interesting examples, though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salting_the_earth

Then there's this note on About:
"The salting of Carthage is a legend. R.T. Ridley in "To be Taken with a Pinch of Salt: The Destruction of Carthage," Classical Philology Vol 81, No. 2 1986 says the first reference he can find to the salting of Carthage comes from the twentieth century."
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/phoe ... oundin.htm

[Epictetus]

Aha! So I'm guessing this 1986 article pointed to Hallward in CAH.

Laudes, Jim.

[M. CVRIVS ALEXANDER]

Hallward, B. L. "The Fall of Carthage" was included in the first edition of CAH (volume VIII, pages 466-84), published in 1930. There is no such article and no mention of the story in volume VIII of the second edition of CAH.

[D B Campbell]

You guys have more or less cleared up this question, but it's a favourite of mine, so I couldn't resist joining in.

Yes, it seems that B.L. Hallward originated the myth in the Cambridge Ancient History vol. 8 (1930), as Ridley surmised in his 1986 Classical Philology article.

B.H. Warmington even admitted (in 1988) that he had repeated Hallward's error via H.H. Scullard. A salutary reminder always to check sources!

There was certainly an ancient tradition that the city had been ploughed over, to underline its utter destruction, but the addition of salt seems to have been Hallward's addition ... although, in 1299, Pope Boniface VIII claimed to have ploughed salt into Praeneste (no doubt following biblical example)!

[Chris Legio X]

This was always a favorite of mine too and well I am a new guy so I am hoping no one mines if I toss in a little feedback. First off incredibly interesting to know where this myth originated from. I always wondered if it was a modern invention or something along the lines of a ploy to spark interest in the field of classical history. Does anyone think that a possibility of where B.L. Hallward got this idea from, might have something to do with how early Christianity tends to pick and choose what parts of the Roman world they wish to claim as part of there own history. I have seen several references to the fact that this myth originated in biblical history or mythology. Does anyone have a reference from the christian sources that pre-dates the fall of Carthage or supposedly took place before the fall of Carthage. As I am not much of a biblical Scholar outside Roman sources, Does some one have a biblical reference point to where this might have originated initially. As in the idea of sowing a vanquished enemies land with salt.

Always open to furthering a great conversation.

[M. Demetrius]

Try Judges 9:45. Said to have been written around 1120BC. I think that clearly predates Carthage. I've read that Carthage was founded around 814 BC.

[Tiberius Clodius Corvinus]

Strange, that this idea did come up in the first place. :? It would've taken literally hundreds of tons of salt to have even a minimal and short-term effect on the vast fields, which were necessary to supply a big city like Carthage. Also hardly imaginable that the Romans wasted more than a little portion for ceremonial reasons of this valueable ressource.

[M. Demetrius]

Well, I can't say whether the Romans had figured out evaporation pools to extract salt from sea water, but I guess even that would be an involved, long-time project. Possible, but not probable.

[Nihonius Legio]

I would think Romans near the ocean could just drink a little ocean water to get their necessary salt for the day. Most salt mines I know of are pretty much made from the salt of ancient oceans. Ocean water is salt water.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Salt could be mined, but you can also farm it from salt pans.