Rome supposedly salted Carthage's earth so nothing would grow — no ancient source says so
After Rome razed Carthage in 146 BC, the legend goes that Roman soldiers salted the earth so nothing would ever grow there again. No ancient historian — not Polybius, not Livy, not Appian — actually records this detail. It first appears in modern retellings, most notably 19th-century scholarship, making it a durable historical myth rather than a documented act.