Carthage, the Salem Witch Trials and the Need to Reevaluate U.S. Commitments to Protect Public Health and the Environment

摘要

IN THE THIRD and second centuries B.C. (B.C.E.), Rome and her allies were busy consolidating power throughout the Mediterranean. The Romans were fighting four Macedonian Wars (plus one with the Seleucid Empire and one with the Achaean League) in the Eastern Basin and the three Punic Wars with Carthage in the Western Basin. Certain historians have recounted the Romans were so weary of war and of the Carthaginians, that when Carthage was defeated, they razed the city, plowed under the remains and salted the Earth. This was both an act of purification and chemical aggression with the intent that upon the sterile land no city could rise again.