Today, the Pentagon paying $700 for a toilet seat might be upsetting. However, Rome far outspent the Pentagon in its plan to destroy Carthage at the end of the 3rd Punic War. The significance of Rome's salting of the fields of Carthage is understood by most to be a need to take such total vengeance on a country that it would be decimated. This author suggests that there was an economic side to Rome's act that has been overlooked &emdash; a side that shows that the price of vengeance was staggering.