<P> When Pope Boniface VIII destroyed Palestrina in 1299, he ordered that it be plowed "following the old example of Carthage in Africa", and also salted . "I have run the plough over it, like the ancient Carthage of Africa, and I have had salt sown upon it ..." The text is not clear as to whether he thought Carthage was salted . Later accounts of other saltings in the destructions of medieval Italian cities are now rejected as unhistorical: Padua by Attila (452), perhaps in a parallel between Attila and the ancient Assyrians; Milan by Frederick Barbarossa (1162); and Semifonte by the Florentines (1202). </P> <P> The English epic poem Siege of Jerusalem (c. 1370) recounts that Titus commanded the sowing of salt on the Temple, but this episode is not found in Josephus . </P> <P> In Spain and the Spanish Empire, salt was poured onto the land owned by a convicted traitor (often one who was executed and their head placed on a picota, or pike, afterwards) after their house was demolished . </P> <P> This was done in Portugal as well . The last known event of this sort was the destruction of the Duke of Aveiro's palace in Lisbon in 1759, due to his participation in the Távora affair (a conspiracy against King Joseph I of Portugal). His palace was demolished and his land was salted . A stone memorial now perpetuates the memory of the shame of the Duke, where it is written: </P>

Romans plowing salt into the ruins of carthage