Sowing salt into the ground

[sethdallob]

IIRC, the Spartans sowed the Athenian soil with salt so that the ground would be infertile…

Does this really work? If so, why do we have “Roundup” et. al.

[GilaB]

Yes, most plants won’t grow if the salt concentration of the surrounding soil is too high. A WAG as to why would be is that the high ion concentration pulls water out of the roots by osmosis instead of the other way around, or perhaps it merely prevents any water from entering for the same reason. People use Roundup and other pesticides because they only want to kill some plants (let’s say dicots, like the dandelions in your lawn, as compared with monocots, like the grass) rather than all plants. Salting your lawn won’t just kill the dandelions, it’d get you a nice salty patch of bare earth, which just isn’t that much fun to run around on with bare feet.

[Fyodor]

I never heard of the Spartans doing that, but I know the Romans sowed the soil of Carthegenia in North Africa with salt after utterly destroying the city of Carthage, in what, 300BC?

[tomndebb]

If so, why do we have “Roundup” et. al.

Because Roundup will break down within a few weeks, allowing a new crop to be planted. Sowing with salt destroys the soil for years (until sufficient rainfall can dilute the salt to the point where crops may grow again).

There used to be a product, Triox, that was a soil sterilizer. It was removed from the market because it could leach into groundwater, etc. It was developed because it worked faster than salt, but its effect was pretty much the same.

[samclem]

Actually, Carthage was destoryed in 146 BC.

Salt says it is a myth(or at least unproven) that salt was put on the ashes of Carthage. I will try to find another site that agrees. This was a first effort.

[justwannano]

Hey Sam

I wish I had found that site because I lost a debate about that here a while back. I thought salt was too precious to them to be dumped on the ground .
Oh Well

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

Yes, probably table salt would have been too expensive, so they wouldn’t have used that. However, they could certainly have used natron, A.K.A. “soda”, which was what the Egyptians used to preserve mummies, and which is easily shoveled out of dried-up prehistoric lake beds.

http://webmineral.com/data/Natron.shtml

http://www.si.edu/resource/faq/nmnh/mummies.htm

The embalmers next removed all moisture from the body. This they did by covering the body with natron, a type of salt which has great drying properties, and by placing additional natron packets inside the body.

On the destruction of Carthage, the “sowing with salt” was symbolic, and I think Sam’s cite, “Verus”, is missing this point. The Romans weren’t intending to “render their prize useless”, they were only intending to make it clear that Carthage was definitely, really, totally, completely out of the picture, and we really mean it.

http://www.barca.fsnet.co.uk/carthage-destruction.htm

The Third Punic War, 151-146 BC, grew out of Rome’s determination to utterly destroy Carthage once and for all.

Carthage was a but a shadow of its former self due to the harsh surrender terms Rome had imposed after the second Punic war. In effect, Rome had given Carthage’s neighboring rivals carte blanche to attack whenever they chose, and Carthage was forbidden to respond. Eventually they could take it no more and declared war on their tormentors. This was all the excuse the Romans needed. For years, the leading Roman statesman Cato the Elder had ended all his speeches in the Senate with the phrase “Carthage must be destroyed,” and finally a majority of Senators agreed.

When Rome declared war once again, Carthage was conciliatory and tried to restore the peace, but Rome would have none of it. At the orders of the Senate, an invading Roman army under general Scipio Aemilianus (adoptedgrandson of Hannibal’s old nemesis) demanded Carthage’s unconditional surrender. When the still-proud Carthaginians refused, the Roman legions laid siege to the city. They constructed a massive jetty across the mouth of the harbor to block it, but the Carthaginians cut a new channel to the sea. All in all, Carthage held out for three years. But in 146 BC Rome breached its walls, slaughtered its inhabitants, and torched the city. It burned for ten days.

Finally, on the orders of the Roman Senate, the ruins of the city were plowed under and the furrows symbolically sown with salt to poison the land itself. It could truly be reported to the Senate, “Carthage is no more."

Since the Romans also had to pass a law forbidding anyone to live there for 25 years afterwards, I doubt if the ground had really been sterilized. And also, after a while the Romans themselves went back there to live.

http://www.barca.fsnet.co.uk/carthage-after-destruction.htm

Occupancy of the site was forbidden for 25 years. In 122 BC the Roman Senate entrusted Gaius Gracchus and Marcus Fulvius Flaccus with the foundation of a colony on the site of Carthage, Colonia Junonia, which lasted only 30 years.

In 46 BC Julius Caesar visited the site and proclaimed that a city should be built there, populated by a number of landless citizens.

Sam’s cite “Verus” says:

There is no ancient source for this act of vandalism, and although the Romans did destroy Carthage this practice would run contrary to ‘normal’ Roman procedures. Consider the fate of Corinth in the same year.

Normal Roman procedures were to totally destroy troublesome cities. This is in fact what happened to Corinth. Is Verus implying that Corinth wasn’t totally destroyed, or is he saying that there’s no mention of the ground having been sown with salt?

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/siteindex?entry=Corinth

The defeat of the Greek forces at Chaironeia (338 B.C.) resulted in a Macedonian garrison being placed at Corinth and the city became the meeting place for the Macedonian controlled Hellenic League. Corinth flourished under Macedonian rule, but revolted in 224 B.C. to join the renewed Achaean League. In 146 B.C. the League was defeated by Rome and Corinth was completely destroyed by the Roman general Mummius.

The city remained virtually abandoned until Julius Caesar established a colony of veterans on the site in 44 B.C.

http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/3/0,5716,109193+6+106272,00.html

. When further negotiations were blocked by Critolaus, Rome declared war on the Achaeans in 146, citing as reason the ill-treatment of their embassy. Metellus (now with the appellation of “Macedonicus”), having delayed with his army, marched against Critolaus and defeated him in Locris. Then Lucius Mummius Archaicus, consul of 146, took over the command and defeated Diaeus and the remaining Achaeans. The Senate ordered Mummius to teach a lesson to the Greeks: the venerable city of Corinth was sacked, its treasures taken to Rome, and its buildings burned to the ground.

The reason why Rome didn’t sow Corinth with salt was that Rome didn’t hate Corinth nearly as much as they hated Carthage. The war with Carthage had gone on and on and on, for 118 years, and that’s only counting the actual “War Years”, not the preceding centuries of bitter rivalry.

The Punic Wars.
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/ROME/PUNICWAR.HTM

The greatest naval power of the Mediterranean in the third century BC was the North African city of Carthage near modern day Tunis.

By the time that Rome controlled all of the Italian peninsula, Carthage already controlled the North African coast from western Libya to the Strait of Gibraltar, and ruled over most of southern Spain—and the island of Corsica and Sardinia in Europe as well. Carthage was a formidable power; it controlled almost all the commercial trade in the Mediterranean, had subjected vast numbers of people all whom sent soldiers and supplies, and amassed tremendous wealth from gold and silver mines in Spain.

The First Punic War: 264-241 BC
The war ended with no particular side winning over the other.

The Second Punic War: 218-202 BC
. At Zama in northern Africa, Hannibal, fighting against Scipio and his army, met his first defeat. Rome reduced Carthage to a dependent state; Rome now controlled the whole of the western Mediterranean including northern Africa.

The Third Punic War: 149-146 BC
The Romans, deeply suspicious of a reviving Carthage, demanded that the Carthaginians abandon their city and move inland into North Africa. The Carthaginians, who were a commercial people that depended on sea trade, refused. The Roman Senate declared war, and Rome attacked the city itself.

After a seige, the Romans stormed the town and the army went from house to house slaughtering the inhabitants in what is perhaps the greatest systematic execution of non-combatants before World War II. Carthaginians who weren’t killed were sold into slavery. The harbor and the city was demolished, and all the surrounding countryside was sown with salt in order to render it uninhabitable.

So this was a true Clash of Titans. By comparison, the Rome/Corinth thing was just a back-alley scrap, soon resolved.