Someone bought the property despite the fact that it was encumbered by having the entire Carthginian army camped on it. The buyer must have been confident that Rome would eventually drive off the enemy. And in the end, the Romans would sack Carthage, sell the population into slavery, burn the city to the ground, and then dump salt in the earth so that nothing would ever grow there again. The Romans took their wars seriously; no Marshall Plans for them."

That must have taken an awful lot of salt...heh.

Say, didn't they pay their soldiers in salt back then? I think that's where the term "salary" comes from, no? Salarium?

So, in effect, they dumped money on their land so nothing would ever grow there again. Kind of like what Alan Greenspan did to the USA.

ebear