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CHAPTER II

AFRICA UNDER THE CÆSARS

B.C. 46-A.D. 96

THE long interval between the destruction of the capital of the Carthaginians and the building of Roman Carthage is frequently lost sight of. After the fall of Punic Carthage a century elapsed before Julius Cæsar landed on the shores of Africa, and another century and a half passed before the reconstructed city became of sufficient importance to be recognised as the metropolis of the new colony. It is during the latter part of this interval that the old Tyrian settlement at Utica, founded about B.C. 1200, played a prominent part in political and commercial life. At first an emporium on the coast, then a walled town with a large mercantile population, governed by a Senate and suffetes, it became the chief Phoenician colony in Africa long before the foundation of Carthage. Utica retained its independence as a free republic for many centuries, but at last, being dragged ununwillingly into the Sicilian wars which preceded the first encounter between Rome and Carthage, it closed an independent career by acknowledging the supremacy of its more powerful countrymen. Such was the strength of its walls and magnificent fortifications at the outbreak of the second Punic war that not even the genius of Scipio nor the gallantry of his soldiers could effect an entry into the city till after four years' protracted siege. In the troublous times that preceded the last Carthaginian war, Utica, forecasting the result of further opposition to the Romans, threw open its gates to the invading army. This step was the commencement of nearly 200 years' revived prosperity. Utica became the residence of the Roman proconsul and the metropolis of Africa Provincia. Under Augustus it obtained the rank of a municipium, and had a population of 40,000 within the walls. The ruined monuments

covering a large tract of land bear testimony to the wealth of the city in Roman times, even at a period subsequent to the recognition of Carthage as the metropolis of Africa at the end of the first century. Under Hadrian it became a colonia. In its last days it was an important centre of Christianity, and the bishop of Utica held a conspicuous position among the prelates of the African Church. One of the chief causes which contributed to its final extinction as a place of renown, and which any traveller can attest, were the vagaries of the Bagradas (Medjerda) which once skirted its walls. This remarkable river, which rises in the beautiful valley of Khamisa in Algeria, and winds in a devious way across the Medjerda plain for a length of about fifty miles, has altered its course more than once. After crossing a marsh it now falls into the sea south of the lake at Porto-Farina, which is a little to the north of Utica, and about eighteen miles farther in that direction than at the period when Carthage was destroyed. The wayward action of the stream, cutting through the banks at one place and depositing its slime at another, has been a source of wonderment to many generations of men inhabiting the Medjerda plains. Legendary history, or rather tradition, asserts that on the banks of the Bagradas the great combat between the army of Attilius Regulus and a monstrous serpent took place, B.C. 225. Pliny repeats the fable, and tells us that the Romans attacked the creature with balista and other weapons of war, laying siege to it as though it were a city. It was 120 feet long, and the skin and jaws were preserved in a temple at Rome till the outbreak of the Numantian war, B.C. 133. To the vagaries of the river may be attributed this old-world legend:-at one time a sluggish stream easily traversed at any part, at another time a swollen torrent deluging the adjacent country and carrying with irresistible force sheep and oxen, houses and trees, and anything that happens to be on the verge of its troubled waters. The silting up of the Gulf of Utica, which is now four miles inland, may be assigned as another reason for the decline of the city. These geographical changes appear to have occurred in the 1 Turbidus arentes lento pede sulcat arenas Bagrada, non ullo Libycis in finibus amne Victus limosas extendere latius undas

Et stagnante vado patulos involvere campos.

Silius Italicus, vi. 141 et seq.

latter days of the Empire, for we learn that Genseric, the Vandal king, A.D. 440, used the harbour of Carthage for the purposes of the fleet with which he contemplated ravaging the coast of Sicily. One may therefore suppose that the harbour of Utica, which was so renowned for its facilities of access and so adapted for warlike purposes, was at that time useless. Again, we find no traces of Byzantine constructions, or reconstruction of Roman work so common throughout North Africa, clearly proving that Utica had lost its value as a mercantile town and a stronghold for defence.

The melancholy interest attaching to the site of any city of the old world is experienced in a marked degree when we contemplate and study the Phoenician and Roman remains of Utica. The town was built on a promontory, and appears to have been divided into two parts, one occupying a series of heights, the other, which was washed by the sea, being probably the commercial centre. Plutarch, in his life of Cæsar, says that the place was very strong and well defended, that Cato strengthened the fortifications considerably, raised the towers, and surrounded the walls with a deep ditch. Hirtius, who accompanied Cæsar in his African campaign, also informs us that the fortifications were magnificent, that the walls were twenty feet thick, with a height up to the battlements of thirty-four feet. In many respects the arrangement of the city was similar to that of Punic Carthage, and was not disturbed by the Romans when they took possession. There was a war-port of monumental character, similar to the Cothon at Carthage and other coast towns, a palace for the admiral situated on an islet in the centre, a commercial harbour of great extent, a Byrsa or acropolis, and cisterns of vast dimensions. Among the buildings of Roman date were a hippodrome, a magnificent theatre, an amphitheatre and museum, temples and baths. It is difficult, in the present day, to trace the lines of all these monumental structures, many of which are indicated by undulations of the ground rather than by masses of ruined masonry. According to M. Daux, the hippodrome or circus

The term cothon may be regarded as of Phoenician origin. We may accept the meaning attached to it by Latin commentators, and as used by the Greek historian Appianus, A.D. 123: 'Cothones appellantur portus in mari arte et manu facti.' (M. J. Toutain, Les Cités Romaines de la Tunisie, p. 150; also cf. Ch. Tissot, Géographie comparée de la Province Romaine d'Afrique, p. 603.)

was 1,730 feet long and 250 feet wide. The amphitheatre, which is clearly defined, was hollowed out of a plateau on the summit of a hill. The great cisterns are six in number, side by side, each measuring 135 feet by 20 feet, with a height to the crown of the vault of 24 feet. Three of these cisterns are in good condition, and are occupied as farm-stables. Their construction is Phoenician, but the vaulting is Roman. The streets of the city were narrow, not exceeding fourteen feet, and they were paved. Servius says that the Romans borrowed the idea of street-paving from the Carthaginians a statement which is borne out by Isidore of Seville and other writers. 'The adjacent country,' says Cæsar in his Commentaries, 'is of great fertility. The trees supply quantities of timber. The fields are covered with corn, and there is water in abundance.' To testify his appreciation of the commercial wealth of the inhabitants, Cæsar, we are told, mulcted three hundred merchants of the city in a sum equivalent to one million sterling. Plutarch also informs us that, on his return from Africa after a campaign of three whole years, Cæsar spoke of his triumph in magniloquent terms. He said that the country he had just conquered was so extensive that the Roman people might draw from it every year two hundred thousand Attic bushels of corn and three million pounds of oil.

The remains of Utica, as well as of other towns on the coast, present opportunities of comparing the Punic and Roman methods of building, in the use of stone and rubble, as well as the application of concrete or rammed earth commonly known as pisé. At Utica the distinction is very marked. The earliest walls, which are massive, are entirely of rubble, but the stones being small and the lime being made from the same stone, they have the appearance of concrete construction. The vaulting of Punic times is with the same materials, but the art of constructing arches by voussoirs, or of vaults on the same principle, was unknown to these Phoenician builders. The inner faces of walls appear to have been coated with thin lime, and from the absence of cut stones, the bold rounding of angles, and the prevalence of rounded forms, it would appear that implements for the dressing and squaring of stone were then unknown. The remains of the admiral's palace, which form a conspicuous mass among the ruins of Utica, are a good example of this kind of building with