CHAPTER XIII.

THE AFRICAN PROVINCES.

[Sidenote: North Africa and the Berber stock.]

North Africa, in a physical and ethnographic point of view, stands by itself like an island. Nature has isolated it on all sides, partly by the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea, partly by the widely-extended shore, incapable of cultivation, of the Great Syrtis below the modern Fezzan, and, in connection therewith, by the desert, likewise closed against cultivation, which shuts off the steppe-land and the oases of the Sahara to the south. Ethnographically the population of this wide region forms a great family of peoples, distinguished most sharply from the Blacks of the south, but likewise strictly separated from the Egyptians, although perhaps with these there may once have subsisted a primeval fellowship. They call themselves in the Riff near Tangier Amâzigh, in the Sahara Imôshagh, and the same name meets us, referred to particular tribes, on several occasions among the Greeks and Romans, thus as Maxyes at the founding of Carthage (ii. 8) {ii. 7.}, as Mazices in the Roman period at different places of the Mauretanian north coast; the similar designation that has remained with the scattered remnants proves that this great people has once had a consciousness, and has permanently retained the impression, of the relationship of its members. To the peoples who came into contact with them this relationship was far from clear; the diversities which prevail among their several parts are not merely at the present day glaring, after in the past thousands of years the mixture with the neighbouring peoples, particularly the Negroes in the south and the Arabs in the north, has had its effect upon them, but certainly were as considerable even before these foreign influences as their extension in space demands. A universally valid expression for the nation as such is wanting in all other idioms; even where the name goes beyond the designation of stock,[275] it yet does not describe the circle as a whole. That of Libyans, which the Egyptians, and after their precedent the Greeks use, belongs originally to the most easterly tribes coming into contact with Egypt, and has always remained specially pertaining to those of the eastern half. That of Nomades, of Greek origin, expresses in the first instance only the absence of settlement, and then in its Roman transformation as Numidians, has become associated with that territory which king Massinissa united under his sway. That of Mauri, of native origin, and current among the later Greeks as well as the Romans, is restricted to the western parts of the land, and continues in use for the kingdoms here formed and the Roman provinces that have proceeded from them. The tribes of the south are comprehended under the name of the Gaetulians, which, however, the stricter use of language limits to the region on the Atlantic Ocean to the south of Mauretania. We are accustomed to designate the nation by the name of Berbers, which the Arabs apply to the northern tribes.

[Sidenote: Type.]

As to their type they stand far nearer to the Indo-Germanic than to the Semitic, and form even at the present day, when since the invasion of Islam North Africa has fallen to the Semitic race, the sharpest contrast to the Arabs. It is not without warrant that various geographers of antiquity have refused to let Africa pass at all as a third continent, but have attached Egypt to Asia and the Berber territory to Europe. As the plants and animals of northern Africa correspond in the main to those of the opposite south-European coast, so the type of man, where it has been preserved unmixed, points altogether to the north:--the fair hair and the blue eyes of a considerable portion, the tall stature, the slender but powerfully knit form, the prevailing monogamy and respect for the position of woman, the lively and emotional temperament, the inclination to settled life, the community founded on the full equality in rights among the grown-up men, which in the usual confederation of several communities affords also the basis for the formation of a state.[276] To strictly political development and to full civilisation this nation, hemmed round by Negroes, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, at no time attained; it must have approximated to it under the government of Massinissa. The alphabet, derived independently from the Phoenician, of which the Berbers made use under Roman rule, and which those of the Sahara still use at the present day, as well as the feeling which, as we have observed, they once had of common national relationship, may probably be referred to the great Numidian king and his descendants, whom the later generations worshipped as gods.[277] In spite of all invasions they have maintained their original territory to a considerable extent; in Morocco now about two-thirds, in Algiers about half of the inhabitants are reckoned of Berber descent.

[Sidenote: Phoenician immigration.]

The immigration, to which all the coasts of the Mediterranean were subjected in the earliest times, made North Africa Phoenician. To the Phoenicians the natives had to give up the largest and best part of the north coast; the Phoenicians withdrew all North Africa from Greek civilisation. The Great Syrtis again forms the linguistic as well as the political line of separation; as on the east the Pentapolis of Cyrene belongs to the Greek circle, so on the west the Tripolis (Tripoli) of Great-Leptis became and remained Phoenician. We have formerly narrated how the Phoenicians after several hundred years of struggle succumbed to the Romans. Here we have to give account of the fortunes of Africa, after the Romans had occupied the Carthaginian territory and had made the neighbouring regions dependent on them.

[Sidenote: The government of the Roman republic.]

The short-sightedness and narrow-mindedness--we may here say, the perversity and brutality--of the foreign government of the Roman republic had nowhere so full sway as in Africa. In southern Gaul, and still more in Spain, the Roman government pursued at least a consolidated extension of territory, and, half involuntarily, the rudiments of Latinising; in the Greek East the foreign rule was mitigated and often almost compensated by the power of Hellenism forcing the hand even of hard policy. But as to this third continent the old national hatred towards the Poeni seemed still to reach beyond the grave of Hannibal’s native city. The Romans held fast the territory which Carthage had possessed at its fall, but less in order to develop it for their own benefit than to prevent its benefiting others, not to awaken new life there, but to watch the dead body; it was fear and envy, rather than ambition and covetousness, that created the province of Africa. Under the republic it had not a history; the war with Jugurtha was for Africa nothing but a lion-hunt, and its historical significance lay in its connection with the republican party struggles. The land was, as a matter of course, turned to full account by Roman speculation; but neither might the destroyed great city rise up afresh, nor might a neighbouring town develop into a similar prosperity; there were here no standing camps as in Spain and Gaul; the Roman province, with its narrow bounds, was on all sides surrounded by relatively civilised territory of the dependent king of Numidia, who had helped in the work of the destruction of Carthage, and now, as a reward for it, received not so much the spoil as the task of protecting it from the inroads of the wild hordes of the interior. That thereby a political and military importance was given to this state, such as no other client-state of Rome ever possessed, and that even on this side the Roman policy, in order merely to banish the phantom of Carthage, conjured up serious dangers, was shown by the share of Numidia in the civil wars of Rome; never during all the internal crises of the empire before or after did a client-prince play such a part as the last king of Numidia in the war of the republicans against Caesar.

[Sidenote: Caesar’s African policy.]

All the more necessarily the state of things in Africa became transformed by this decision of arms. In the other provinces, as a consequence of the civil wars, there was a change of rule; in Africa there was a change of system. The African possession of the Phoenicians itself was not a proper dominion over Africa; it may be in some measure compared with the dominion in Asia Minor of the Hellenes before Alexander. Of this dominion the Romans had then taken over but a small part, and of that part they had nipped the bud. Now Carthage arose afresh, and, as if the soil had only been waiting for the seed, soon flourished anew. The whole country lying behind--the great kingdom of Numidia--became a Roman province, and the protection of the frontier against the barbarians was undertaken by the Roman legionaries. The kingdom of Mauretania became, in the first instance, a Roman dependency, and soon also a part of the Roman empire. With the dictator Caesar the civilising and Latinising of Africa took their place among the tasks of the Roman government. Here we have to set forth how the task was carried out, first as to the outward organisation, and then as to the arrangements made and results achieved for the several districts.

[Sidenote: Extent of the Roman rule.]

Territorial sovereignty over the whole of North Africa had doubtless already been claimed on the part of the Roman republic, perhaps as a portion of the Carthaginian inheritance, perhaps because “our sea” early became one of the fundamental ideas of the Roman commonwealth; and, in so far, all its coasts were regarded by the Romans even of the developed republic as their true property. Nor had this claim of Rome ever been properly contested by the larger states of North Africa after the destruction of Carthage; if in many places the neighbours did not submit to the dominion, they were just as little obedient to their local rulers. That the silver moneys of king Juba I. of Numidia and of king Bogud of Mauretania were coined after the Roman standard, and the Latin legend--little as it was suited to the relations of language and of intercourse then subsisting in North Africa--was never absent from them, was the direct recognition of the Roman supremacy, a consequence, it may be presumed, of the new organisation of North Africa that in the year 674 U.C. {80 B.C.} was accomplished by Pompeius. The generally insignificant resistance which the Africans, apart from Carthage, opposed to the Romans, came from the descendants of Massinissa; after king Jugurtha, and later king Juba, were vanquished, the princes of the western country submitted without more ado to the dependence required of them. The arrangements which the emperors made were carried out quite after the same way in the territory of the dependent princes as in the immediate territory of Rome; it was the Roman government that regulated the boundaries in all North Africa, and constituted Roman communities at its discretion in the kingdom of Mauretania no less than in the province of Numidia. We cannot therefore speak, in the strict sense, of a Roman subjugation of North Africa. The Romans did not conquer it like the Phoenicians or the French; but they ruled over Numidia as over Mauretania, first as suzerains, then as successors of the native governments. It is so much the more a question, whether the notion of frontier admits of application to Africa in the usual sense. The states of Massinissa, of Bocchus, of Bogud, as also the Carthaginian, proceeded from the northern verge, and all the civilisation of North Africa is based pre-eminently on this coast; but, so far as we can discern, they all regarded the tribes settled or roving in the south as subjects, and, if they withdrew themselves from subjection, as insurgents, so far as the distance and the desert did not by doing away with contact do away with control. Neighbouring states, with which relations of right or of treaty might have subsisted, can hardly be pointed out in the south of northern Africa, or where such a one appears, such as, in particular, the kingdom of the Garamantes, its position is not to be strictly distinguished from that of the hereditary principalities within the civilised territory. This was the case also as regards Roman Africa; as for the previous rulers, so also doubtless for Roman civilisation there was to be found a limit to the south, but hardly so for the Roman territorial supremacy. There is never mention of any formal extension or taking back of the frontier in Africa; the insurrections in the Roman territory, and the inroads of the neighbouring peoples, look here all the more similar to each other, as even in the regions undoubtedly in Roman possession, still more than in Syria or Spain, many a remote and impassable district knew nothing of Roman taxation and of Roman recruiting. For that reason it seems appropriate to connect with the view of the several provinces at the same time the slight information which has been left to us in historical tradition, or by means of preserved monuments, respecting the friendly or hostile relations of the Romans with their southern neighbours.

[Sidenote: Province of Africa and Numidia.]

The former territory of Carthage and the larger part of the earlier kingdom of Numidia, united with it by the dictator Caesar, or, as they also called it, the old and the new Africa, formed until the end of the reign of Tiberius the province of that name, which extended from the boundary of Cyrene to the river Ampsaga, embracing the modern state of Tripoli as well as Tunis and the French province of Constantine (iv. 470 f.) {iv. 447.}. The government, however, for this territory, which was considerable, and required an extended frontier-defence, reverted under the emperor Gaius in the main to the twofold division of the republican times, and committed the portion of the province that did not stand in need of special border-defence to the civil government, and the rest of the territory furnished with garrisons to a military commandant not further amenable to its authority. The cause of this was, that Africa in the partition of the provinces between emperor and senate was given to the latter, and, as from the state of things there a command on a larger scale could not be dispensed with, the co-ordination of the governor delegated by the senate and of the military commandant nominated by the emperor--which latter according to the subsisting hierarchy was placed under the orders of the former--could not but provoke and did provoke collisions between these officials and even between emperor and senate. To this an end was put in the year 37 by an arrangement that the coast-land from Hippo (Bonah), as far as the borders of Cyrene, should retain the old name of Africa and should remain with the proconsul, whereas the western part of the province with the capital Cirta (Constantine), as well as the interior with the great military camps to the north of the Aures, and generally all territory furnished with garrisons, should be placed under the commandant of the African legion. This commandant had senatorial rank, but belonged not to the consular, but to the praetorial class.

[Sidenote: The two Mauretanian kingdoms.]

The western half of North Africa was divided at the time of the dictator Caesar (iv. 461) {iv. 438.} into the two kingdoms of Tingi (Tangier), at that time under king Bogud and of Iol, the later Caesarea (Zershell), at that time under king Bocchus. As both kings had as decidedly taken the side of Caesar in the struggle against the republicans as king Juba of Numidia had taken the side of the opposite party, and as they had rendered most essential services to him during the African and the Spanish wars, not merely were both left in possession of their rule, but the domain of Bocchus, and probably also that of Bogud, was enlarged by the victor.[278] Then, when the rivalries between Antonius and Caesar the younger began, king Bogud alone in the west placed himself on the side of Antonius, and on the instigation of his brother and of his wife invaded Spain during the Perusine war (714) {40 B.C.}; but his neighbour Bocchus and his own capital Tingis took part for Caesar and against him. At the conclusion of peace Antonius allowed Bogud to fall, and Caesar gave the rest of his territory to king Bocchus, but gave Roman municipal rights to the town of Tingis. When, some years later, a rupture took place between the two rulers, the ex-king took part energetically in the struggle in the hope of regaining his kingdom on this occasion, but at the capture of the Messenian town Methone he was taken prisoner by Agrippa and executed.

[Sidenote: Juba II.]

Already some years before (721) {33 B.C.} king Bocchus had died; his kingdom, the whole of western Africa, was soon afterwards (729) {25 B.C.} obtained by the son of the last Numidian king, Juba II., the husband of Cleopatra, the daughter of Antonius by the Egyptian queen.[279] Both had been exhibited to the Roman public in early youth as captive kings’ children, Juba in the triumphal procession of Caesar the father, Cleopatra in that of the son; it was a wonderful juncture that they now were sent away from Rome as king and queen of the most esteemed vassal-state of the empire, but it was in keeping with the circumstances. Both were brought up in the imperial family; Cleopatra was treated by the legitimate wife of her father with motherly kindness like her own children; Juba had served in Caesar’s army. The youth of the dependent princely houses, which was numerously represented at the imperial court and played a considerable part in the circle around the imperial princes, was generally employed in the early imperial period for the filling up of the vassal principalities, after a similar manner, according to free selection, as the first class in rank of the senate was employed for the filling up of the governorships of Syria and Germany. For almost fifty years (729-775 U.C., 25 B.C-A.D. 23) he, and after him his son Ptolemaeus, bore rule over western Africa; it is true that, like the town Tingis from his predecessor, a considerable number of the most important townships, particularly on the coast, was withdrawn from him by the bestowal of Roman municipal rights, and, apart from the capital, these kings of Mauretania were almost nothing but princes of the Berber tribes.

[Sidenote: Erection of the provinces of Caesarea and Tingi.]

This government lasted up to the year 40, when it appeared fitting to the emperor Gaius, chiefly on account of the rich treasure, to call his cousin to Rome, to deliver him there to the executioner, and to take the territory into imperial administration. Both rulers were unwarlike, the father a Greek man of letters after the fashion of this period, compiling so-called memorabilia of a historical or geographical kind, or relative to the history of art, in endless books, noteworthy by his--we might say--international literary activity, well read in Phoenician and Syrian literature, but exerting himself above all to diffuse the knowledge of Roman habits and of so-called Roman history among the Hellenes, moreover, a zealous friend of art and frequenter of the theatre; the son a prince of the common type, passing his time in court-life and princely luxury. Among their subjects they were held of little account, whether as regards their personality or as vassals of the Romans; against the Gaetulians in the south king Juba had on several occasions to invoke the help of the Roman governor, and, when in Roman Africa the prince of the Numidians, Tacfarinas, revolted against the Romans, the Moors flocked in troops to his banner. Nevertheless the end of the dynasty and the introduction of Roman provincial government into the land made a deep impression. The Moors were faithfully devoted to their royal house; altars were still erected under the Roman rule in Africa to the kings of the race of Massinissa (p. 305). Ptolemaeus, whatever he might be otherwise, was Massinissa’s genuine descendant in the sixth generation, and the last of the old royal house. A faithful servant of his, Aedemon, after the catastrophe called the mountain-tribes of the Atlas to arms, and it was only after a hard struggle that the governor Suetonius Paullinus--the same who afterwards fought with the Britons (I. 179)--was able to master the revolt (in the year 42). In the organisation of the new territory the Romans reverted to the earlier division into an eastern and a western half, or, as they were thenceforth called from the capitals, into the provinces of Caesarea and of Tingi; or rather they retained that division, for it was, as will be afterwards shown, necessarily suggested by the physical and political relations of the territory, and must have continued to subsist even under the same sceptre in one or the other form. Each of these provinces was furnished with imperial troops of the second class, and placed under an imperial governor not belonging to the senate.

The state and the destinies of this great and peculiar new seat of Latin civilisation were conditioned by the physical constitution of North Africa. It is formed by two great mountain-masses, of which the northern falls steeply towards the Mediterranean, while the southern, the Atlas, slopes off slowly in the Sahara-steppe dotted with numerous oases towards the desert proper. A smaller steppe, similar on the whole to the Sahara and dotted with numerous salt-lakes, serves in the middle portion, the modern Algeria, to separate the mountains on the north coast and those on the southern frontier. There are in North Africa no extensive plains capable of culture; the coast of the Mediterranean Sea has a level foreland only in a few districts; the land capable of cultivation, according to the modern expression the Tell, consists essentially of the numerous valleys and slopes within those two broad mountain-masses, and so extends to its greatest width where, as in the modern Morocco and in Tunis, no steppe intervenes between the northern and the southern border.

[Sidenote: Tripolis.]

The region of Tripolis, politically a part of the province of Africa, stands as respects its natural relations outside of the territory described, and is annexed to it in peninsular fashion. The frontier-range sloping down towards the Mediterranean Sea touches at the bay of Tacapae (Gabes), with its foreland of steppe and salt-lake, immediately on the shore. To the south of Tacapae as far as the Great Syrtis there extends along the coast the narrow Tripolitan island of cultivation, bounded inland towards the steppe by a chain of moderate height. Beyond it begins the steppe-country with numerous oases. The protection of the coast against the inhabitants of the desert is here of special difficulty, because the high margin of mountains is wanting; and traces of this are apparent in the accounts that have come to us of the military expeditions and the military positions in this region.

[Sidenote: The wars with the Garamantes.]

It was the arena of the wars with the Garamantes. Lucius Cornelius Balbus, who in his younger years had fought and administered under Caesar with the most adventurous boldness as well as with the most cruel recklessness, was selected by Augustus to reduce these inconvenient neighbours to quiet, and in his proconsulate (735) he subdued the interior as far as Cidamus (Ghadames), twelve days’ journey inland from Tripolis, and Garama (Germa) in Fezzan;[280] at his triumph--he was the last commoner who celebrated such an one--a long series of towns and tribes, hitherto unknown even by name, were displayed as vanquished. This expedition is named a conquest; and so doubtless the foreland must have been thereby brought in some measure under the Roman power. There was fighting subsequently on many occasions in this region. Soon afterwards, still under Augustus, Publius Sulpicius Quirinius made an expedition against the tribes of Marmarica, that is, of the Libyan desert above Cyrene, and at the same time against the Garamantes. That the war against Tacfarinas under Tiberius extended also over this region will be mentioned further on. After its termination the king of the Garamantes sent envoys to Rome, to procure pardon for his having taken part in it. In the year 70 an irruption of the Garamantes into the pacified territory was brought about by the circumstance that the town Oea (Tripoli) called the barbarians to help the Tripolis in a quarrel, which had grown into war, with the neighbouring town Great-Leptis (Lebda), whereupon they were beaten back by the governor of Africa and pursued to their own settlements. Under Domitian on the coast of the Great Syrtis, which had been from of old held by the Nasamones, a revolt of the natives provoked by the exorbitant taxes had to be repressed with arms by the governor of Numidia; the territory already poor in men was utterly depopulated by this cruelly conducted war. The emperor Severus took conspicuous care of this his native province--he was from Great-Leptis--and gave to it stronger military protection against the neighbouring barbarians. With this we may bring into connection the fact, that in the time from Severus to Alexander the nearest oases, Cidamus (Ghadames), Gharia el Gharbia, Bonjem, were provided with detachments of the African legion, which, it is true, owing to the distance from the headquarters, could not be much more than a nucleus for the probably considerable contingents of the subject tribes here rendering services to the Romans. In fact the possession of these oases was of importance not merely for the protection of the coast, but also for the traffic, which at all times passed by way of these oases from the interior of Africa to the harbours of Tripolis. It was not till the time of decay that the possession of these advanced posts was abandoned; in the description of the African wars under Valentinian and Justinian we find the towns of the coast directly harassed by the natives.

[Sidenote: The Africano-Numidian territory and army.]

The basis and core of Roman Africa was the province of that name, including the Numidian, which was a branch from it. Roman civilisation entered upon the heritage partly of the city of Carthage, partly of the kings of Numidia, and if it here attained considerable results, it may never be forgotten that it, properly speaking, merely wrote its name and inscribed its language on what was already there. Besides the towns, which were demonstrably founded by the former or by the latter, and to which we shall still return, the former as well as the latter led the Berber tribes, inclined at any rate to agriculture, towards fixed settlements. Even in the time of Herodotus the Libyans westward of the bay of Gabes were no longer nomads, but peacefully cultivated the soil; and the Numidian rulers carried civilisation and agriculture still farther into the interior. Nature, too, was here more favourable for husbandry than in the western part of North Africa; the middle depression between the northern and the southern range is indeed here not quite absent, but the salt lakes and the steppe proper are less extensive than in the two Mauretanias. The military arrangements were chiefly designed to plant the troops in front of the mighty Aurasian mountain-block, the Saint Gotthard of the southern frontier-range, and to check the irruption of the non-subject tribes from the latter into the pacified territory of Africa and Numidia. For that reason Augustus placed the stationary quarters of the legion at Theveste (Tebessa), on the high plateau between the Aures and the old province; even to the north of it, between Ammaedara and Althiburus, Roman forts existed in the first imperial period. Of the details of the warfare we learn little; it must have been permanent, and must have consisted in the constant repelling of the border-tribes, as well as in not less constant pillaging raids into their territory.

[Sidenote: War against Tacfarinas.]

Only as to a single occurrence of this sort has information in some measure accurate come to us; namely, as to the conflicts which derive their name from the chief leader of the Berbers, Tacfarinas. They assumed unusual proportions; they lasted eight years (17-24), and the garrison of the province otherwise consisting of a legion was on that account reinforced during the years 20-22 by a second despatched thither from Pannonia. The war had its origin from the great tribe of the Musulamii on the south slope of the Aures, against whom already under Augustus Lentulus had conducted an expedition, and who now under his successor chose that Tacfarinas as their leader. He was an African Arminius, a native Numidian, who had served in the Roman army, but had then deserted and made himself a name at the head of a band of robbers. The insurrection extended eastwards as far as the Cinithii on the Little Syrtis and the Garamantes in Fezzan, westwards over a great part of Mauretania, and became dangerous through the fact that Tacfarinas equipped a portion of his men after the Roman fashion on foot and on horseback, and gave them Roman training; these gave steadiness to the light bands of the insurgents, and rendered possible regular combats and sieges. After long exertions, and after the senate had been on several occasions induced to disregard the legally prescribed ballot in filling up this important post of command, and to select fitting men instead of the usual generals of the type of Cicero, Quintus Iunius Blaesus in the first instance made an end of the insurrection by a combined operation, inasmuch as he sent the left flank column against the Garamantes, and with the right covered the outlets from the Aures towards Cirta, while he advanced in person with the main army into the territory of the Musulamii and permanently occupied it (year 22). But the bold partisan soon afterwards renewed the struggle, and it was only some years later that the proconsul Publius Cornelius Dolabella, after he had nipped in the bud the threatened revolt of the just chastised Musulamii by the execution of all the leaders, was able with the aid of the troops of the king of Mauretania to force a battle in his territory near Auzia (Aumale), in which Tacfarinas lost his life. With the fall of the leader, as is usual in national wars of insurrection, this movement had an end.[281]

[Sidenote: Later conflicts.]

From later times detailed accounts of a like kind are lacking; we can only follow out in some measure the general course of the Roman work of pacification. The tribes to the south of Aures were, if not extirpated, at any rate ejected and transplanted into the northern districts; so in particular the Musulamii themselves,[282] against whom an expedition was once more conducted under Claudius. The demand made by Tacfarinas to have settlements assigned to him and his people within the civilised territory, to which Tiberius, as was reasonable, only replied by redoubling his exertions to annihilate the daring claimant, was supplementarily after a certain measure fulfilled in this way, and probably contributed materially to the consolidation of the Roman government. The camps more and more enclosed the Aurasian mountain-block. The garrisons were pushed farther forward into the interior; the headquarters themselves moved under Trajan away from Theveste farther to the west; the three considerable Roman settlements on the northern slope of the Aures, Mascula (Khenschela), at the egress of the valley of the Arab and thereby the key to the Aures mountains, a colony at least already under Marcus and Verus; Thamugadi, a foundation of Trajan’s; and Lambaesis, after Hadrian’s day the headquarters of the African army, formed together a settlement comparable to the great military camps on the Rhine and on the Danube, which, laid out on the lines of communication from the Aures to the great towns of the north and the coast Cirta (Constantine), Calama (Gelma), and Hippo regius (Bonah), secured the peace of the latter. The intervening steppe-land was, so far as it could not be gained for cultivation, at least intersected by secure routes of communication. On the west side of the Aures a strongly occupied chain of posts which followed the slope of the mountains from Lambaesis over the oases Calceus Herculis (el Kantara) and Bescera (Beskra), cut off the connection with Mauretania. Even the interior of the mountains subsequently became Roman; the war, which was waged under the emperor Pius in Africa, and concerning which we have not accurate information, must have brought the Aurasian mountains into the power of the Romans. At that time a military road was carried through these mountains by a legion doing garrison duty in Syria and sent beyond doubt on account of this war to Africa, and in later times we meet at that very spot traces of Roman garrisons and even of Roman towns, which reach down to Christian times; the Aurasian range had thus at that time been occupied, and continued to be permanently occupied. The oasis Negrin, situated on its southern slope, was even already under or before Trajan furnished by the Romans with troops, and still somewhat farther southward on the extreme verge of the steppe at Bir Mohammed ben Jûnis are found the ruins of a Roman fort; a Roman road also ran along the southern base of this range. Of the mighty slope which falls from the table-land of Theveste, the watershed between the Mediterranean and the desert, in successive stages of two to three hundred mètres down to the latter, this oasis is the last terrace; at its base begins, in sharp contrast towards the jagged mountains piled up behind, the sand desert of Suf, with its yellow rows of dunes similar to waves, and the sandy soil moved about by the wind, a huge wilderness, without elevation of the ground, without trees, fading away without limit into the horizon. Negrin was certainly of old, as it still is in our time, the standing rendezvous and the last place of refuge of the robber chiefs as well as of the natives defying foreign rule--a position commanding far and wide the desert and its trading routes. Even to this extreme limit reached Roman occupation and even Roman settlement in Numidia.

[Sidenote: Roman civilisation in Mauretania.]

Mauretania was not a heritage like Africa and Numidia. Of its earlier condition we learn nothing; there cannot have been considerable towns even on the coast here in earlier times, and neither Phoenician stimulus nor sovereigns after the type of Massinissa effectively promoted civilisation in this quarter. When his last descendants exchanged the Numidian crown for the Mauretanian, the capital, which changed its name Iol into Caesarea, became the residence of a cultivated and luxurious court, and a seat of seafaring and of traffic. But how much less this possession was esteemed by the government than that of the neighbouring province, is shown by the difference of the provincial organisation; the two Mauretanian armies were together not inferior in number to the Africano-Numidian,[283] but here governors of equestrian rank and imperial soldiers of the class of _peregrini_ sufficed. Caesarea remained a considerable commercial town; but in the province the fixed settlement was restricted to the northern mountain-range, and it was only in the eastern portion that larger inland towns were to be found. Even the fertile valley of the most considerable river of this province, the Shelîf, shows weak urban development; further to the west in the valleys of the Tafna and the Malua it almost wholly disappears, and the names of the divisions of cavalry here stationed serve partly in place of local designations. The province of Tingi (Tangier) even now embraced nothing but this town with its immediate territory and the stripe of the coast along the Atlantic Ocean as far as Sala, the modern Rebât, while in the interior Roman settlement did not even reach to Fez. No land-route connects this province with that of Caesarea; the 220 miles from Tingi to Rusaddir (Melilla) they traversed by water, along the desolate and insubordinate coast of the Riff. Consequently for this province the communication with Baetica was nearer than that with Mauretania; and if subsequently, when the empire was divided into larger administrative districts, the province of Tingi fell to Spain, that measure was only the outward carrying out of what in reality had long subsisted. It was for Baetica what Germany was for Gaul; and, far from lucrative as it must have been, it was perhaps instituted and retained for the reason that its abandonment would even then have brought about an invasion of Spain similar to that which Islam accomplished after the collapse of the Roman rule.

[Sidenote: The Gaetulian wars.]

Beyond the limit of fixed settlement herewith indicated,--the line of frontier tolls and of frontier posts--and in various non-civilised districts enclosed by it, the land in the two Mauretanias during the Roman times remained doubtless with the natives, but they came under Roman supremacy; there would be claimed from them, as far as possible, taxes and war-services, but the regular forms of taxation and of levy would not be applied in their case. For example, the tribe of Zimizes, which was settled on the rocky coast to the west of Igilgili (Jijeli) in eastern Mauretania, and so in the heart of the domain of the Roman power, had assigned to it a fortress designed to cover the town of Igilgili, to be occupied on such a footing that the troops were not allowed to pass beyond the radius of 500 paces round the fort.[284] They thus employed these subject Berbers in the Roman interest, but did not organise them in the Roman fashion, and hence did not treat them as soldiers of the imperial army. Even beyond their own province the irregulars from Mauretania were employed in great numbers, particularly as horsemen in the later period,[285] while the same did not hold of the Numidians.

How far the field of the Roman power went beyond the Roman towns and garrisons and the end of the imperial roads, we are not able to say. The broad steppe-land round the salt-lakes to the west of Lambaesis, the mountain-region from Tlemsen till towards Fez, including the coast of the Riff, the fine corn-country on the Atlantic Ocean southward from Sala as far as the high Atlas, the civilisation of which in the flourishing time of the Arabs vied with the Andalusian, lastly, the Atlas range in the south of Algeria and Morocco and its southern slopes, which afforded for pastoral people abundant provision in the alternation of mountain and steppe pastures, and developed the most luxuriant fertility in the numerous oases--all these regions remained essentially untouched by the Roman civilisation; but from this it does not follow that they were in the Roman time independent, and still less that they were not at least reckoned as belonging to the imperial domain. Tradition gives us but slight information in this respect. We have already mentioned (p. 313) that the proconsuls of Africa helped to make the Gaetulians--that is, the tribes in southern Algeria--subject to king Juba; and the latter constructed purple dyeworks at Madeira (p. 338, note). After the end of the Mauretanian dynasty and the introduction of the immediate Roman administration, Suetonius Paullinus crossed, as the first Roman general, the Atlas (p. 313), and carried his arms as far as the desert-river Ger, which still bears the same name, in the south-east of Morocco. His successor, Gnaeus Hosidius Geta, continued this enterprise, and emphatically defeated the leader of the Mauri Salabus. Subsequently several enterprising governors of the Mauretanian provinces traversed these remote regions, and the same holds true of the Numidian, under whose command, not under the Mauretanian, was placed the frontier-range stretching southward behind the province of Caesarea;[286] yet nothing is mentioned from later times of war-expeditions proper in the south of Mauretania or Numidia. The Romans can scarcely have taken over the empire of the Mauretanian kings in quite the same extent as these had possessed it; but yet the expeditions that were undertaken after the annexation of the country were probably not without lasting consequences. At least a portion of the Gaetulians submitted, as the auxiliary troops levied there prove, even to the regular conscription during the imperial period; and, if the native tribes in the south of the Roman provinces had given serious trouble to the Romans, the traces of it would not have been wholly wanting.[287] Probably the whole south as far as the great desert passed as imperial land,[288] and even the effective dependence extended far beyond the domain of Roman civilisation, which, it is true, does not exclude frequent levying of contributions and pillaging raids on the one side or the other.

[Sidenote: Incursions of the Moors into Spain.]

[Sidenote: Quinquegentiani.]

The pacified territory experienced attack, properly so called, chiefly from the inhabitants of the shore settled around and along the Riff, the Mazices, and the Baquates; and this indeed took place, as a rule, by sea, and was directed chiefly against the Spanish coast (I. 67). Accounts of inroads of the Moors into Baetica run through the whole imperial period,[289] and show that the Romans, in consequence of the absence of energetic offensive, found themselves here permanently on a defensive, which indeed did not involve a vital danger for the empire, but yet brought constant insecurity and often sore harm over rich and peaceful regions. The civilised territories of Africa appear to have suffered less under the Moorish attacks, probably because the headquarters of Numidia, immediately on the Mauretanian frontier, and the strong garrisons on the west side of the Aures, did their duty. But on the collapse of the imperial power in the third century the invasion here also began; the feud of Five Peoples, as it was called, which broke out about the time of Gallienus, and on account of which twenty years later the emperor Maximianus went personally to Africa, arose from the tribes beyond the Shott on the Numido-Mauretanian frontier, and affected particularly the towns of Eastern Mauretania and of Western Numidia, such as Auzia and Mileu.[290]

[Sidenote: Continuance of the Berber language.]

We come to the internal organisation of the country. In respect of language, that which belonged properly to the people was treated like the Celtic in Gaul and the Iberian in Spain; here in Africa all the more, as the earlier foreign rule had already set the example in that respect, and certainly no Roman understood this popular idiom. The Berber tribes had not merely a national language, but also a national writing (p. 305); but never, so far as we see, was use made of it in official intercourse, at least it was never put upon the coins. Even the native Berber dynasties formed no exception to this, whether because in their kingdoms the more considerable towns were more Phoenician than Libyan, or because the Phoenician civilisation prevailed so far generally. The language was written indeed also under Roman rule, in fact most of the Berber votive or sepulchral inscriptions proceed certainly from the imperial period; but their rarity proves that it attained only to limited written use in the sphere of the Roman rule. It maintained itself as a popular language above all naturally in the districts, to which the Romans came little or not at all, as in the Sahara, in the mountains of the Riff of Morocco, in the two Kabylias; but even the fertile and early cultivated island of the Tripolis, Girba (Jerba), the seat of the Carthaginian purple manufacture, still at the present day speaks Libyan. Taken on the whole, the old popular idiom in Africa defended itself better than among the Celts and the Iberians.

[Sidenote: Continuance of the Phoenician language.]

The language which prevailed in North Africa, when it became Roman, was that of the foreign rule which preceded the Roman. Leptis, probably not the Tripolitan, but that near Hadrumetum, was the only African town which marked its coins with a Greek legend, and thus conceded to this language an at least secondary position in public intercourse. The Phoenician language prevailed at that time so far as there was a civilisation in North Africa, from Great Leptis to Tingi, most thoroughly in and around Carthage, but not less in Numidia and Mauretania.[291] To this language of a highly developed although foreign culture certain concessions were made on the change in the system of administration. Perhaps already under Caesar, certainly under Augustus and Tiberius, as well the towns of the Roman province, such as Great Leptis and Oea, as those of the Mauretanian kingdom, like Tingi and Lix, employed in official use the Phoenician language, even those which like Tingi had become Roman burgess-communities. Nevertheless they did not go so far in Africa as in the Greek half of the empire. In the Greek provinces of the empire the Greek language prevailed, as in business intercourse generally, so particularly in direct intercourse with the imperial government and its officials; the coin of the city organised after the Greek fashion names also the emperor in Greek. But in the African the coin, even if it speaks in another language, names the emperor or the imperial official always in Latin. Even on the coins of the kings of Mauretania the name of the Greek queen stands possibly in Greek, but that of the king--also an imperial official--uniformly in Latin, even where the queen is named beside him. That is to say, even the government did not admit the Phoenician in its intercourse with the communities and individuals in Africa, but it allowed it for internal intercourse; it was not a third imperial language, but a language of culture recognised in its own sphere.

But this limited recognition of the Phoenician language did not long subsist. There is no document for the public use of Phoenician from the time after Tiberius, and it hardly survived the time of the first dynasty.[292] How and when the change set in we do not know; probably the government, perhaps Tiberius or Claudius, spoke the decisive word and accomplished the linguistic and national annexation of the African Phoenicians as far as it could be done by state authority. In private intercourse the Phoenician held its ground still for a long time in Africa, longer apparently than in the motherland; at the beginning of the third century ladies of genteel houses in Great Leptis spoke so little Latin or Greek, that there was no place for them in Roman society; even at the end of the fourth there was a reluctance to appoint clergymen in the environs of Hippo Regius (Bona), who could not make themselves intelligible in Punic to their countrymen; these termed themselves at that time still Canaanites, and Punic names and Punic phrases were still current. But the language was banished from the school[293] and even from written use, and had become a popular dialect; and even this probably only in the region of the old Phoenician civilisation, particularly the old Phoenician places on the coast that stood aloof from intercourse on a large scale.[294] When the Arabs came to Africa they found as language of the country doubtless that of the Berbers, but no longer that of the Poeni;[295] with the Carthagino-Roman civilisation the two foreign languages disappeared, while the old native one still lives in the present day. The civilised foreign dominions changed; the Berbers remained like the palm of the oasis and the sand of the desert.

[Sidenote: The Latin language.]

The heritage of the Phoenician language fell not to Greek, but to Latin. This was not involved in the natural development. In Caesar’s time the Latin and the Greek were alike in North Africa foreign languages, but as the coins of Leptis already show, the latter by far more diffused than the former; Latin was spoken then only by the officials, the soldiers, and the Italian merchants. It would have at that time been probably easier to introduce the Hellenising of Africa than the Latinising of it. But it was the converse that took place. Here the same will prevailed, which did not allow the Hellenic germs to spring up in Gaul, and which incorporated Greek Sicily into the domain of Latin speech; the same will, which drew the boundaries between the Latin West and the Greek East, assigned Africa to the former.

[Sidenote: The Phoenician urban organisation.]

In a similar sense the internal organisation of the country was regulated. It was based, as in Italy on the Latin and in the East on the Hellenic urban community, so here on the Phoenician. When the Roman rule in Africa began, the Carthaginian territory at that time consisted predominantly of urban communities, for the most part small, of which there were counted three hundred, each administered by its sufetes;[296] and the republic had made no change in this respect. Even in the kingdoms the towns formerly Phoenician had retained their organisation under the native rulers, and at least Calama--an inland town of Numidia hardly of Phoenician foundation--had demonstrably the same Phoenician municipal constitution; the civilisation which Massinissa gave to his kingdom must have consisted essentially in his transforming the villages of the agricultural Berbers into towns after the Phoenician model. The same will hold good of the few older urban communities which existed in Mauretania before Augustus. So far as we see, the two annually changing sufetes of the African communities coincide in the main with the analogous presidents of the community in the Italian municipal constitution; and that in other respects, _e.g._ in the common councils among the Carthaginians formed after a fashion altogether divergent from the Italian (ii. 16) {ii. 15.}, the Phoenician urban constitution of Roman Africa has preserved national peculiarities, does not at least admit of proof.[297] But the fact itself that the contrast, if even but formal, of the Phoenician town to the Italian was retained was, like the permission of the language, a recognition of the Phoenician nationality and a certain security for its continuance even under Roman rule. That it was recognised in the first instance as the regular form of administration of the African territory, is proved by the establishment of Carthage by Caesar primarily as a Phoenician city as well under the old sufetes[298] as in a certain measure with the old inhabitants, seeing that a great, perhaps the greatest part of the new burgesses was taken from the surrounding townships, again also under the protection of the great goddess of the Punic Carthage, the queen of heaven Astarte, who at that time marched in with her votaries anew into her old abode. It is true that in Carthage itself this organisation soon gave place to the Italian colonial constitution, and the protecting patroness Astarte became the--at least in name--Latin Caelestis. But in the rest of Africa and in Numidia the Phoenician urban organisation probably remained throughout the first century the predominant one, in so far as it pertained to all communities of recognised municipal rights and lacking Roman or Latin organisation. Abolished in the proper sense it doubtless was not, as in fact sufetes still occur under Pius; but by degrees they everywhere make way for the duoviri, and the changed principle of government entails in this sphere also its ultimate consequences.

[Sidenote: Transformation of the Phoenician towns into Italian.]

The transformation of Phoenician urban rights into Italian began under Caesar. The old Phoenician town of Utica, predecessor and heiress of Carthage--as some compensation for the severe injury to its interests by the restoration of the old capital of the country--obtained, as the first Italian organisation in Africa, perhaps from the dictator Caesar, Latin rights, certainly from his successor Augustus the position of a Roman _municipium_. The town of Tingi received the same rights, in gratitude for the fidelity which it had maintained during the Perusine war (p. 311). Several others soon followed; yet the number of communities with Roman rights in Africa down to Trajan and Hadrian remained limited.[299] Thenceforth there were assigned on a great scale--although, so far as we see, throughout by individual bestowal--to communities hitherto Phoenician municipal or else colonial rights; for the latter too were subsequently as a rule conferred merely in a titular way without settlement of colonists. If the dedications and memorials of all sorts, that formerly appeared but sparingly in Africa, present themselves in abundance from the beginning of the second century, this was doubtless chiefly the consequence of the adoption of numerous townships into the imperial union of the towns with best rights.

[Sidenote: Settlement of Italian colonists in Africa.]

Besides the conversion of Phoenician towns into Italian _municipia_ or colonies, not a few towns of Italian rights arose in Africa by means of the settlement of Italian colonists. For this too the dictator Caesar laid the foundation--as indeed for no province perhaps so much as for Africa were the paths prescribed by him--and the emperors of the first dynasty followed his example. We have already spoken of the founding of Carthage; the town obtained not at once, but very soon, Italian settlers and therewith Italian organisation and full rights of Roman citizenship. Beyond doubt from the outset destined once more to be the capital of the province and laid out as a great city, it rapidly in point of fact became so. Carthage and Lugudunum were the only cities of the West which, besides the capital of the empire, had a standing garrison of imperial troops. Moreover in Africa--in part certainly already by the dictator, in part only by the first emperor--a series of small country-towns in the districts nearest to Sicily, Hippo Diarrhytus, Clupea, Curubi, Neapolis, Carpi, Maxula, Uthina, Great-Thuburbo, Assuras, were furnished with colonies, probably not merely to provide for veterans, but to promote the Latinising of this region. The two colonies which arose at that time in the former kingdom of Numidia, Cirta with its dependencies, and New-Cirta or Sicca, were the result of special obligations of Caesar towards the leader of free bands Publius Sittius from Nuceria and his Italiano-African bands (iv. 470, 574) {iv. 447, 544.}. The former, inasmuch as the territory on which it was laid out belonged at that time to a client-state (p. 311, note), obtained a peculiar and very independent organisation, and retained it in part even later, although it soon became an imperial city. Both rose rapidly and became considerable centres of Roman civilisation in Africa.

[Sidenote: And in Mauretania.]

The colonisation, which Augustus undertook in the kingdom of Juba and Claudius carried forward, bore another character. In Mauretania, still at that time very primitive, there was a want both of towns and of the elements for creating them; the settlement of soldiers of the Roman army, who had served out their time, brought civilisation here into a barbarous land. Thus in the later province of Caesarea along the coast Igilgili, Saldae, Rusazu, Rusguniae, Gunugi, Cartenna (Tenes), and farther away from the sea Thubusuptu and Zuccabar, were settled with Augustan, and Oppidum Novum with Claudian, veterans; as also in the province of Tingi under Augustus Zilis, Babba, Banasa, under Claudius Lix. These communities with Roman burgess-rights were not, as was already observed, under the kings of Mauretania, so long as there were such, but were attached administratively to the adjoining Roman province; consequently there was involved in these settlements, as it were, a beginning towards the annexation of Mauretania.[300] The pushing forward of civilisation, such as Augustus and Claudius aimed at, was not subsequently continued, or at any rate continued only to a very limited extent, although there was room enough for it in the western half of the province of Caesarea and in that of Tingi; that the later colonies regularly proceeded from titular bestowal without settlement, has already been remarked (p. 332).

[Sidenote: Large landed estates.]

Alongside of this urban organisation we have specially to mention that of the large landed estates in this province. According to Roman arrangement it fitted itself regularly into the communal constitution; even the extension of the _latifundia_ affected this relationship less injuriously than we should think, since these, as a rule, were not locally compact and were often distributed among several urban territories. But in Africa the large estates were not merely more numerous and more extensive than elsewhere, but these assumed also the compactness of urban territories; around the landlord’s house there was formed a settlement, which was not inferior to the small agricultural towns of the province, and, if its president and common councillors often did not venture and still oftener were not able to subject such a fellow-burgess to the full payment of the communal burdens falling upon him, the _de facto_ release of these estates from the communal bond of union became still further marked, when such a possession passed over into the hands of the emperor.[301] But this early occurred in Africa to a great extent; Nero in particular, lighted with his confiscations on the landowners, as is said, of half Africa, and what was once imperial was wont to remain so. The small lessees, to whom the domanial estate was farmed out, appear for the most part to have been brought from abroad, and these imperial _coloni_ may be reckoned in a certain measure as belonging to the Italian immigration.

[Sidenote: Organisation of the Berber communities.]

We have formerly remarked (p. 306) that the Berbers formed a considerable portion of the population of Numidia and Mauretania through the whole time of the Roman rule. But as to their internal organisation hardly more can be ascertained than the emergence of the clan (_gens_)[302] instead of the urban organisation under duoviri or sufetes. The societies of the natives were not, like those of North Italy, assigned as subjects to individual urban communities, but were placed like the towns immediately under the governors, doubtless also, where it seemed necessary, under a Roman officer specially placed over them (_praefectus gentis_), and further under authorities of their own[303]--the “headman” (_princeps_), who in later times bore possibly the title of king, and the “eleven first.” Presumably this arrangement was monarchical in contrast to the collegiate one of the Phoenician as of the Latin community, and there stood alongside of the tribal chief a limited number of elders instead of the numerous senate of decuriones of the towns. The communities of natives in Roman Africa seem to have attained afterwards to Italian organisation only by way of exception; the African towns with Italian rights, which did not originate from immigration, had doubtless for the most part Phoenician civic rights previously. Exceptions occur chiefly in the case of transplanted tribes, as indeed the considerable town Thubursicum originated from such a forced settlement of Numidians. The Berber communities possessed especially the mountains and the steppes; they obeyed the foreigners, without either the masters or the subjects feeling any desire to come to terms with one another; and, when other foreigners invaded the land, their position in presence of the Vandals, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the French, remained almost on the old footing.

[Sidenote: Husbandry.]

In the economy of the soil the eastern half of Africa vies with Egypt. Certainly the soil is unequal, and rocks and steppes occupy not only the greater portion of the western half, but also considerable tracts in the eastern; here too there were various inaccessible mountain-regions, which yielded but slowly or not at all to civilisation; particularly on the rocky ridges along the coast the Roman rule left few or no traces. Even the Byzacene, the south-eastmost part of the proconsular province, is only designated as a specially productive region by an erroneous generalisation of what holds good as to individual coast districts and oases; from Sufetula (Sbitla) westward the land is waterless and rocky; in the fifth century A.D. Byzacene was reckoned to have about a half less per cent of land capable of culture than the other African provinces. But the northern and north-western portion of the proconsular province, above all the valley of the largest river in north Africa, the Bagradas (Mejerda), and not less a considerable part of Numidia, yield abundant grain crops, almost like the valley of the Nile. In the favoured districts the country towns, very frequent, as their ruins show, lay so near to each other that the population here cannot have been much less dense than in the land of the Nile, and according to all traces it prosecuted especially husbandry. The mighty armed masses, with which after the defeat at Pharsalus the republicans in Africa took up the struggle against Caesar, were formed of these peasants, so that in the year of war the fields lay untilled. Since Italy used more corn than it produced, it was primarily dependent, in addition to the Italian islands, on the almost equally near Africa; and after it became subject to the Romans, its corn went thither not merely by way of commerce, but above all as tribute. Already in Cicero’s time the capital of the empire doubtless subsisted for the most part on African corn; through the admission of Numidia under Caesar’s dictatorship the corn thenceforth coming in as tribute increased according to the estimate about 1,200,000 Roman bushels (525,000 hectolitres) annually. After the Egyptian corn supplies were instituted under Augustus, for the third part of the corn used in Rome North Africa was reckoned upon, and Egypt for a like amount; while the desolated Sicily, Sardinia, and Baetica, along with Italy’s own production, covered the rest of the need. In what measure the Italy of the imperial period was dependent for its subsistence on Africa is shown by the measures taken during the wars between Vitellius and Vespasian and between Severus and Pescennius; Vespasian thought that he had conquered Italy when he occupied Egypt and Africa; Severus sent a strong army to Africa to hinder Pescennius from occupying it.

[Sidenote: Oil and wine.]

Oil, too, and wine had already held a prominent place in the old Carthaginian husbandry, and on Little-Leptis (near Susa), for example, an annual payment of 3,000,000 pounds of oil (nearly 10,000 hectolitres) could be imposed by Caesar for the Roman baths, as indeed Susa still at the present day exports 40,000 hectolitres of oil. Accordingly the historian of the Jugurthan war terms Africa rich in corn, poor in oil and wine, and even in Vespasian’s time the province gave in this respect only a moderate yield. It was only when the peace with the empire became permanent--a peace which the fruit-tree needed even far more than the fruits of the field--that the culture of olives extended; in the fourth century no province supplied such quantities of oil as Africa, and the African oil was predominantly employed for the baths in Rome. In quality, doubtless, it was always inferior to that of Italy and Spain, not because nature there was less favourable, but because the preparation lacked skill and care. The cultivation of the vine acquired no prominent importance in Africa for export. On the other hand the breeding of horses and of cattle flourished, especially in Numidia and Mauretania.

[Sidenote: Manufactures and commerce.]

Manufactures and trade never had the same importance in the African provinces as in the East and in Egypt. The Phoenicians had transplanted the preparation of purple from their native country to these coasts, where the island of Gerba (Jerba) became the African Tyre, and was inferior only to the latter itself in quality. This manufacture flourished through the whole imperial period. Among the few deeds which king Juba II. has to show, is the arrangement for obtaining purple on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and on the adjacent islands.[304] Woollen stuffs of inferior quality and leather goods were manufactured in Mauretania, apparently by the natives, also for export.[305] The trade in slaves was very considerable. The products of the interior of the country naturally passed by way of North Africa into general commerce, but not to such an extent as by way of Egypt. The elephant, it is true, was the device of Mauretania in particular, and there, where it has now for long disappeared, it was still hunted down to the imperial period; but probably only small quantities came thence into commerce.

[Sidenote: Prosperity.]

The prosperity which subsisted in the part of Africa at all cultivated is clearly attested by the ruins of its numerous towns, which, in spite of the narrow bounds of their domains, everywhere exhibit baths, theatres, triumphal arches, gorgeous tombs, and generally buildings of luxury of all kinds, mostly mediocre in art, often excessive in magnificence. Not quite in the villas of the superior nobility, as in the Gallic land, but in the middle class of the farming burgesses must the economic strength of these regions have lain.[306]

[Sidenote: Roads.]

The frequency of intercourse, so far as we may judge of it from our knowledge of the network of roads, must within the civilised territory have corresponded to the density of the population. During the first century the imperial roads originated, which connected the headquarters of that time, Theveste, partly with the coast of the Lesser Syrtis--a step, having close relation to the formerly narrated pacification of the district between the Aures and the sea--partly with the great cities of the north coast, Hippo regius (Bona) and Carthage. From the second century onward we find all the larger towns and several smaller active in providing the necessary communications within their territory; this, however, doubtless holds true of most of the imperial lands, and only comes into clearer prominence in Africa, because this opportunity was made use of more diligently here than elsewhere to do homage to the reigning emperor. As to the road-system of the districts, which though Roman were yet not Romanised, and as to the routes which were the medium of the important traffic through the desert, we have no general information.

[Sidenote: Introduction of camels.]

But probably a momentous revolution occurred in the desert-traffic during that time by the introduction of the camel. In older times it meets us, as is well known, only in Asia as far as Arabia, while Egypt and all Africa knew simply the horse. During the first three centuries of our era the countries effected an exchange, and, like the Arabian horse, the Libyan camel, we may say, made its appearance in history. Mention of the latter first occurs in the history of the war waged by the dictator Caesar in Africa; when here among the booty by the side of captive officers twenty-two camels of king Juba are adduced, such a possession must at that time have been of an extraordinary nature in Africa. In the fourth century the Roman generals demand from the towns of Tripolis thousands of camels for the transport of water and of provisions before they enter upon the march into the desert. This gives a glimpse of the revolution that had taken place during the interval in the circumstances of the intercourse between the north and the south of Africa; whether it originated from Egypt or from Cyrene and Tripolis we cannot tell, but it redounded to the advantage of the whole north of this continent.

[Sidenote: Character and culture of the people.]

Thus North Africa was a valuable possession for the finances of the empire. Whether the Roman nation generally gained or lost more by the assimilation of North Africa, is less ascertained. The dislike which the Italian felt from of old towards the African did not change after Carthage had become a Roman great city, and all Africa spoke Latin; if Severus Antoninus combined in himself the vices of three nations, his savage cruelty was traced to his African father, and the ship captain of the fourth century, who thought that “Africa was a fine country but the Africans were not worthy of it, for they were cunning and faithless, and there might be some good people among them, but not many,” was at least not thinking of the bad Hannibal, but was speaking out the feeling of the great public at the time. So far as the influence of African elements may be recognised in the Roman literature of the imperial period, we meet with specially unpleasant leaves in a book generally far from pleasant. The new life, which bloomed for the Romans out of the ruins of the nations extirpated by them, was nowhere full and fresh and beautiful; even the two creations of Caesar, the Celtic land and North Africa--for Latin Africa was not much less his work than Latin Gaul--remained structures of ruins. But the toga suited, at any rate, the new-Roman of the Rhone and the Garonne better than the “Seminumidians and Semigaetulians.” Doubtless Carthage remained in the numbers of its population and in wealth not far behind Alexandria, and was indisputably the second city of the Latin half of the empire, next to Rome the most lively, perhaps also the most corrupt, city of the West, and the most important centre of Latin culture and literature. Augustine depicts with lively colours how many an honest youth from the province went to wreck there amid the dissolute doings of the circus, and how powerful was the impression produced on him--when, a student of seventeen years of age, he came from Madaura to Carthage--by the theatre with its love-pieces and with its tragedy. There was no lack in the African of diligence and talent; on the contrary, perhaps more value was set upon the Latin and along with it the Greek instruction, and on its aim of general culture, in Africa than anywhere else in the empire, and the school-system was highly developed. The philosopher Appuleius under Pius, the celebrated Christian author Augustine, both descended from good burgess-families--the former from Madaura, the latter from the neighbouring smaller place Thagaste--received their first training in the schools of their native towns; then Appuleius studied in Carthage, and finished his training in Athens and Rome; Augustine went from Thagaste first to Madaura, then likewise to Carthage; in this way the training of youth was completed in the better houses throughout. Juvenal advises the professor of rhetoric who would earn money to go to Gaul or, still better, to Africa, “the nurse of advocates.” At a nobleman’s seat in the territory of Cirta there has recently been brought to light a private bath of the later imperial period equipped with princely magnificence, the mosaic pavement of which depicts how matters went on once at the castle; the palaces, the extensive hunting-park with the hounds and stags, the stables with the noble race-horses, occupy no doubt most of the space, but there is not wanting also the “scholar’s corner” (_filosofi locus_), and beside it the noble lady sitting under the palms.

[Sidenote: Scholasticism.]

But the black spot of the African literary character is just its scholasticism. It does not begin till late; before the time of Hadrian and of Pius the Latin literary world exhibits no African name of repute, and subsequently the Africans of note were throughout, in the first instance, schoolmasters, and came as such to be authors. Under those emperors the most celebrated teachers and scholars of the capital were native Africans, the rhetor Marcus Cornelius Fronto from Cirta, instructor of the princes at the court of Pius, and the philologue Gaius Sulpicius Apollinaris from Carthage. For that reason there prevailed in these circles sometimes the foolish purism that forced back the Latin into the old-fashioned paths of Ennius and of Cato, whereby Fronto and Apollinaris made their repute, sometimes an utter oblivion of the earnest austerity innate in Latin, and a frivolity producing a worse imitation of bad Greek models, such as reaches its culmination in the--in its time much admired--“Ass-romance” of that philosopher of Madaura. The language swarmed partly with scholastic reminiscences, partly with unclassical or newly coined words and phrases. Just as in the emperor Severus, an African of good family and himself a scholar and author, his tone of speech always betrayed the African, so the style of these Africans, even those who were clever and from the first trained in Latin, like the Carthaginian Tertullian, has regularly something strange and incongruous, with its diffuseness of petty detail, its minced sentences, its witty and fantastic conceits. There is a lack of both the graceful charm of the Greek and of the dignity of the Roman. Significantly we do not meet in the whole field of Africano-Latin authorship a single poet who deserves to be so much as named.

[Sidenote: Christian literature in Africa.]

It was not till the Christian period that it became otherwise. In the development of Christianity Africa plays the very first part; if it arose in Syria, it was in and through Africa that it became the religion for the world. As the translation of the sacred books from the Hebrew language into the Greek, and that into the popular language of the most considerable Jewish community out of Judaea, gave to Judaism its position in the world, so in a similar way for the transference of Christianity from the serving East to the ruling West the translation of its confessional writings into the language of the West became of decisive importance; and this all the more, inasmuch as these books were translated, not into the language of the cultivated circles of the West, which early disappeared from common life and in the imperial age was everywhere a matter of scholastic attainment, but into the decomposed Latin already preparing the way for the structure of the Romance languages--the Latin of common intercourse at that time familiar to the great masses. If Christianity was by the destruction of the Jewish church-state released from its Jewish basis (p. 229), it became the religion of the world by the fact, that in the great world-empire it began to speak the universally current imperial language; and those nameless men, who since the second century Latinised the Christian writings, performed for this epoch just such a service, as at the present day, in the heightened measure required by the enlarged horizon of the nations, is carried out in the footsteps of Luther by the Bible Societies. And these men were in part Italians, but above all Africans.[307] In Africa to all appearance the knowledge of Greek, which is able to dispense with translations, was far more seldom to be met with than at least in Rome; and, on the other hand, the Oriental element, that preponderated particularly in the early stages of Christianity, here found a readier reception than in the other Latin-speaking lands of the West. Even as regards the polemic literature called especially into existence by the new faith, since the Roman church at this epoch belonged to the Greek circle (p. 226), Africa took the lead in the Latin tongue. The whole Christian authorship down to the end of this period is, so far as it is Latin, African; Tertullian and Cyprian were from Carthage, Arnobius from Sicca, Lactantius, and probably in like manner Minucius Felix, were, in spite of their classic Latin, Africans, and not less the already mentioned somewhat later Augustine. In Africa the growing church found its most zealous confessors and its most gifted defenders. For the literary conflict of the faith Africa furnished by far the most and the ablest combatants, whose special characteristics, now in eloquent discussion, now in witty ridicule of fables, now in vehement indignation, found a true and mighty field for their display in the onslaught on the old gods. A mind--intoxicated first by the whirl of a dissolute life, and then by the fiery enthusiasm of faith--such as utters itself in the Confessions of Augustine, has no parallel elsewhere in antiquity.

APPENDIX: ROMAN BRITAIN

(Chapter V. Vol. I. pp. 170-194)

Mommsen’s sketch of Roman Britain has often been called deficient and inaccurate. As a general judgment, this is wholly unjust. The sketch has real and distinct merits. When first issued in 1885, it marked a great advance towards a right conception of its subject. It differed conspicuously, and all for the better, from the other sketches of Roman Britain which were then current and accepted, Hübner’s papers since collected in his _Römische Herrschaft in Westeuropa_, Wright’s _Celt, Roman, and Saxon_, Scarth’s _Roman Britain_. To-day it is perhaps the best existing account of the conquest and military administration of the province, and it contains much which no one--least of all, our English archaeologists--can afford to neglect. On the other hand, it is undeniably not one of the best sections in the volume to which it belongs, and it treats some parts of its theme, notably the civil life and civilisation, very shortly. One may be pardoned for taking the occasion of its republication in English dress, to make a few additions and corrections which may interest English readers, while they fill some gaps and take note of some recent discoveries.

The accounts of the Claudian invasion and the early years of the conquest (pp. 172-9) are, in their broad outlines, beyond reasonable doubt. But details can perhaps be added or altered. The army which started in A.D. 43 in three corps (τριχῇ νεμηθέντες, Dio, 60, 20) may well have landed in the three harbours afterwards used by the Romans in Kent, Lymne, Dover, and Richborough--the last named being the principal port for passengers to and from Britain throughout the Roman period. The difficult river crossed shortly afterwards by Plautius may be the Medway near Rochester, where in after years the Roman road from the Kentish ports to London had its bridge. The subsequent course of the invading armies is not easy to trace. But it would seem that, when they had won London and Colchester, they advanced from this base-line in three separate corps to the conquest of the South and Midlands. The left wing, the Second Legion Augusta under Vespasian, overran the south as far (probably) as South Wales and Exeter (Suet. _Vesp._ 4; Tac. _Agric._ 13; _Hist._ iii. 44; tile of Legio ii. Aug. at Seaton, _Archæological Journal_, xlix. 180). The centre, the Fourteenth and Twentieth Legions, crossed the Midlands to Wroxeter and Chester (tile of Legio xx. at Whittlebury, _Vict. Hist. of Northants_, i. 215; inscriptions at Wroxeter and Chester). The right wing, the Ninth, moved up the east side of Britain to Lincoln (tile of Legio ix. at Hilly Wood, on the road towards Lincoln, _Vict. Hist. of Northants_, i. 214; inscriptions at Lincoln). These three lines of advance led direct to the positions of the fortresses where we find the legions presently posted. They agree also with the three main groups of Roman roads which radiate from London: (1) the south-west route to Silchester, and thence by branches to Winchester, Exeter, Bath, South Wales; (2) the Midland “Watling Street,” by St. Albans to Wroxeter and Chester; (3) the eastern route to Colchester, Cambridge, and Castor near Peterborough, to Lincoln.[308]

In any case there can be little doubt that by A.D. 47 or 48--within four or five years of the first landing--the Roman troops had reached the basins of the Humber and the Severn, as Mommsen observes (p. 176). This much is plain from the fact that Ostorius, who came out in 47, had at once to deal with the Iceni of Norfolk, the Decangi of Flintshire, the Brigantes of Yorkshire, the Silures of Monmouthshire (Tac. _Ann._ xii. 31). But the difficult corruption of Tacitus (_ibid._), _cuncta castris antonam et Sabrinam fluvios cohibere parat_, is probably to be emended (with Dr. H. Bradley, _Academy_, April and May 1883) _cuncta cis Trisantonam_, _i.e._ the Roman frontier at the moment was, roughly, Severn and Trent. This is preferable both to Mommsen’s suggestion (given above, p. 176 note) and to mine (_Journ. Phil._ xvii. 268). The older and more violent remedy, _Avonam inter et Sabrinam_, though revived in the text of the second edition of Furneaux’s _Tacitus_ (1907), is pretty certainly wrong; indeed, it is not Latin.

It would seem then that, by 47 or 48, practically the whole lowlands were in the hands of the Romans. Whether Chester had already been occupied or (as seems likelier) was first garrisoned when Ostorius attacked the Decangi, must remain uncertain; it must in any case have been occupied soon (_Eph. Epigr._ vii. 903; Domaszewski, _Rhein. Mus._ xlviii. 344). Caerleon, connected by Mommsen with Tac. _Ann._ xii. 32, presents more difficulty, since it has yielded hardly any datable remains earlier than about A.D. 70-80; however, no other site can be suggested on our present evidence for the _hiberna_ of the Second Legion Augusta before 70. Wroxeter rests its claim to a fortress on two early inscriptions of Legio xiv. (_Vict. Hist. Shropshire_, i. 243, 244), and this may be adequate, though Domaszewski doubts it. The course of Watling Street seems to show that Wroxeter was occupied before the troops pushed on to Chester.

Mommsen’s account of the Boadicean revolt (pp. 179-181) is famous for his denunciation of Tacitus as “the most unmilitary of all authors.” It must be conceded that Tacitus is unmilitary--not so much because he is condensed or discontinuous or ignorant of geography (E. G. Hardy, _Journ. Phil._ xxxi. 123), as because he has a literary horror of all technical detail, and desires to give the general effect of each situation without distracting the reader by vexatious precision and difficult _minutiae_. But in this case his narrative (_Ann._ xii. 32 foll.) is better than Mommsen (or indeed Domaszewski) allows. Paullinus doubtless marched to London, as Horsley long ago observed, because it lay on the road (Watling Street) from Chester to Colchester; that he hurried on in front of his main forces is implied in the _iam_ at the beginning of c. 34.

The conquest of Wales (p. 182) was completed, as Mommsen says, in the decade A.D. 70-80. But his statements require some re-wording. Roman remains are not “completely absent” in the interior; the continuance of native resistance to Rome is very doubtful; the existence of Celtic speech and nationality in Wales to-day is--in large part, at least--due to a Celtic revival in the late fourth or the fifth century, and to immigration of new Celtic elements at that time, and cannot therefore be cited as here. So far as present evidence goes, the district as a whole seems during the first, second, and third centuries to have closely resembled the similar mountainous districts of northern England, save only that the Welsh tribes never revolted after A.D. 80, while the Brigantes gave trouble throughout the second century. The same system of small auxiliary _castella_ was established in Wales as in northern England. These forts are at present almost wholly unexplored. But we can detect unquestionable examples at Caerhun (Canovium, _Eph._ vii. 1099) and Carnarvon, in the north; at Tommen-y-mur, Llanio-i-sa, and Caio, in the west; at Caergai (_Eph._ vii. 863), Castle Collen near Llandrindod (_ibid._ 862), Caersws in the upper valley of the Severn, and the Gaer near Brecon, in the interior; at Gelligaer (_Trans. Cardiff Nat. Soc._ xxxv. 1903), Merthyr Tydfil, Cardiff, Abergavenny, Usk, in the south, besides others not yet satisfactorily identified as military sites. Several of these have yielded remains suggestive of the first century, and indeed of the Flavian period. The only one as yet properly excavated, Gelligaer, seems to have been occupied under the Flavians, and dismantled after no very long occupation, probably early in the second century. Such dismantlement suggests that the land was then growing less unquiet. But Wales never reached any higher degree of Roman civilisation than the north of England. Towns and country houses were always rare, and its population lived mostly, it would seem, in primitive villages (_Arch. Cambrensis_, 1907). Later on, in the fourth century, Celts began to come in from Ireland, much as other barbarians entered other parts of the Empire, but their dates and numbers are very little known; see my _Romanisation of Roman Britain_, pp. 27 foll. and refs. there given.

The invasion of Caledonia (p. 183) by Agricola has been illustrated by recent discoveries. As I have pointed out elsewhere, we have traces of Agricola’s line of forts (Tac. _Agr._ 23) at Camelon (_Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scotland_, xxxv. fig. 10) and Bar Hill (G. Macdonald, _Roman Forts on the Bar Hill_, Glasgow, 1906). Farther north, near the junction of the Tay and Isla, at Inchtuthill, in the policies of Delvine, a large encampment of Roman type has yielded a few objects datable to the Agricolan age (_Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot._ xxxvi. pp. 237, 242), and may give a clue to the site of Mons Graupius. Farther south, the large fort lately excavated by Mr. James Curle, at Newstead, near Melrose (_C. I. L._ vii. 1080, 1081; _Scottish Hist. Review_, 1908), was certainly occupied in the Agricolan age. To this date, too, may perhaps be assigned the siege works round the native fortress on Birrenswark in Dumfriesshire, with their leaden sling-bullets (_Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot._ xxxiii. 198 foll.). Evidence that the Legio ii. Adiutrix was then posted at Chester, probably forming a double-legion fortress with Legio xx., was obtained in the excavations of 1890 (_Catal. of the Grosvenor Museum, Chester_ (1900), pp. 7 foll. and Nos. 23-35). An inscription from Camelon with the letters MILITES L·II·A·DIE may have been intended to refer to this legion, but is a forgery (_Class. Review_, xix. 57). No trace of Agricolan or of Flavian remains has yet been found on the line of Hadrian’s Wall, except at two points, which, strictly speaking, are near but not on the wall, Carlisle (Luguvallium), and Corbridge (Corstopitum), where the two great north roads pass on towards Caledonia. For the influence of continental frontier troubles on the British operations of Agricola see also Ritterling, _Jahreshefte des österr. arch. Instituts_, vii. 26.

The years between the recall of Agricola and the building of Hadrian’s Wall (roughly A.D. 85-120) are a historical blank. Even the position of the northern frontier during these years is unknown. The Romans seem to have soon withdrawn from the line of the Clyde and Forth (Macdonald, _Bar Hill_, pp. 14, 15). Whether they also withdrew south of Cheviot is not quite clear, in the present state of the Newstead excavations.

Hadrian’s Wall from Tyne to Solway (p. 186) has assumed a very different historical appearance since Mommsen wrote his paragraphs on it in 1885. Then, the theory of Hodgson and Bruce held the field--that the stone wall which is still visible, and the double rampart and ditch to the south of it (called by English antiquaries the “Vallum”), were both Hadrian’s work, the wall for defence against Caledonia and the “Vallum” for defence against stray foes from the south. This view was accepted by Mommsen. But later excavation and observation have shown that the “Vallum” cannot be regarded as a military work--though it is certainly Roman and connected with the wall. Excavations have also shown that the wall itself falls into two periods. At Birdoswald (Amboglanna) there was first a wall of turf (_murus caespiticius_); later, almost but not quite on the same line, came the wall of stone and the fort of Amboglanna in its present form. Similarly at Chesters (Cilurnum) two building periods are discernible; the character of the first is obscure, but the stone wall and the fort of Cilurnum belong unquestionably to the second (_Cumberland Arch. Soc._ xiv. 187, 415, xv. 180, 347, xvi. 84; _Arch. Aeliana_, xxiii. 9). As our ancient authorities persistently mention two wall-builders, Hadrian and Severus, and as the earlier wall of turf can be assigned to no one but Hadrian, it would seem that we may assume a first fortification of the Tyne and Solway line in turf about A.D. 120, and a rebuilding in stone, on almost exactly the same _tracé_, about A.D. 208 by Severus. The “Vallum” seems to have been built in relation to one or the other--more probably the earlier--of these stone walls, and may represent a civil frontier contemporaneous with it (Mommsen, _Gesammelte Schriften_, v. 461; Pelham, _Trans. Cumberland Arch. Soc._ xiv. 175). The attempt of Dr. E. Krueger (_Bonner Jahrbücher_, cx. 1-38) to show that the “Vallum” is an earlier independent work, built by Hadrian, while the turf and stone walls are post-Hadrianic, seems to me both unproven and contradicted by recent excavations.

Mommsen’s account of the Wall of Pius between Forth and Clyde and of the Roman occupation of Scotland also needs modification. Statistics of coins found in Scotland (printed in _Antonine Wall Report_, 1899, pp. 158 foll., confirmed by all later finds) show that the Romans had retired south of Cheviot by about A.D. 180, and never reoccupied the positions thus lost. The mass of inscriptions, to which Mommsen alludes, also contains nothing later than the reign of Marcus. It becomes, therefore, impossible to connect the Wall of Pius with the literary evidence relating to wall-building by Severus. That evidence must belong to the Tyne and Solway. The length which it assigns to the wall, cxxxii. miles, suits the southern line best. The numeral in any case needs emendation, but it is as easy to read lxxxii. as xxxii., and 82 Roman miles fit closer to the length of the southern line (73-1/2 English miles) than do 32 Roman miles to the 36-1/2 English miles of the northern wall. Our knowledge of the northern wall itself and of forts either north of it, like Ardoch, or south, like Lyne and Newstead, has been much widened by excavation, but the gain has been rather to the archaeologist than to the pure historian.

In the later history of north Britain the chief recent addition has been evidence of a serious rising about A.D. 158, which perhaps covered all the land of the Brigantes from Derbyshire to Dumfriesshire. Inscriptions found at Birrens, at Netherby between Birrens and Carlisle, at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and at Brough in north Derbyshire, mention a governor Iulius Verus as then specially active, and special reinforcements as then arriving from Germany (_Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot._ xxxviii. 454). It is natural to connect these with the words of Pausanias (cited on p. 188, note 2), and the connection had the approval of Mommsen. For the division of the province into two by Severus see Domaszewski, _Rangordnung_, p. 173. The boundary between the two provinces is unknown; perhaps a line from the Humber to the Mersey is not altogether improbable. Nor is there evidence to show how long the division lasted.

Of the civil life and Romanisation of Britain (pp. 191-4) I have written somewhat fully in a paper on _The Romanisation of Roman Britain_. Here I may indicate some points. Mommsen’s view that the cantonal system adopted in Gaul was dropped in Britain is opposed by an inscription found at Caerwent in 1903, which records the erection of a monument by the canton of the Silures after a decree of the local senate--_ex decreto ordinis respublica civitatis Silurum_ (_Athenaeum_, Sept. 26, 1903; _Archaeologia_, lix. 290); other inscriptions, if less decisive, suggest that the case of the Silures was not unique in the province. Indeed, a list of the cantonal capitals, and therefore of the cantons, seems to survive mutilated in the _Ravennas_ (ed. Parthey and Pinder, pp. 425 foll.). There we meet, besides three municipalities carefully so labelled, nine or ten towns with tribal affixes--Isca Dumnoniorum, Exeter; Venta Belgarum, Winchester; Venta Silurum, Caerwent; Corinium Dobunorum, Cirencester; Calleva Atrebatum, Silchester; Durovernum Cantiacorum, Canterbury; Viroconium Cornoviorum, Wroxeter; Ratae Coritanorum, Leicester; Venta Icenorum, Caistor-by-Norwich--and perhaps Noviomagus Regentium, Chichester. Add to these Isurium Brigantum, known otherwise by this title, and Dorchester in Dorset, and there emerges a fairly complete list of just those towns which are declared by their remains to have been the chief “country towns” of Roman Britain. The reasons why so little is heard of the cantons are, I think, plain. They were smaller, poorer, and less important than those of Gaul--as, indeed, a comparison of the town-remains shows; there was, further, no British literature to mention them; and, lastly, they quickly fell before the barbarians in the fifth century.

The town-life of Roman Britain (p. 192) was somewhat more extensive than Mommsen allows. There were four _coloniae_--Colchester or _Camulodunum_, founded about A.D. 48 (Tac. _Ann._ xii. 32); Lincoln, _Lindum_, established after the transference of the Ninth Legion to York, probably in the late first century; Gloucester or _Glevum_, founded A.D. 96-98 (_C. I. L._ vi. 3346); York or _Eburacum_, planted at an unknown date, on the opposite bank of the Ouse to the legionary fortress; and one _municipium_, Verulamium, outside St. Albans, founded before A.D. 60. There were also about a dozen “country towns,” already enumerated in the last paragraph. These were for the most part not large villages, but actual towns, furnished with temples, _fora_, houses, and street plans of Roman fashion, and inhabited, so far as our scanty evidence goes, by populations of which both upper and lower classes spoke and wrote Latin. At Bath, _Aquae Sulis_, were well-built baths, and a stately temple of the goddess of the waters. At London, _Londinium_ (later _Augusta_), was a prosperous and wealthy trading-centre. But London was the only town of real size or splendour. The rest, like the cantons mentioned above, were small and unimportant as compared with similar towns elsewhere, and though it is not strictly true that Gloucester and Verulam have produced no inscriptions (p. 193; _Eph. Epigr._ iv. p. 195), the epigraphic yield has been scanty in every town except perhaps York.

The roads of the province (p. 192) are numerous, though fewer than our English antiquaries sometimes suppose. Those in the south, as Mommsen rightly saw, radiate from London: see p. 192 above. The northern military district is traversed by three main routes. One runs up the west coast to the Solway and Carlisle. A second runs through the east of the island, from York to Corbridge and to various points on the eastern part of Hadrian’s Wall. The third, diverging from the second, crossed the Yorkshire and Westmorland hills and thus reached Carlisle. From Corbridge and Carlisle roads ran on northwards, and the eastern, if not the western, of these gave access to the Wall of Pius. The Roman roads of Wales are still imperfectly known, but there was a road from Chester to Carnarvon, another from Caerleon past Neath to Carmarthen, and a third joined the western parts of these two, while others connected the forts in the interior.

More doubt surrounds the Romanisation of the province. Vinogradoff (_Growth of the Manor_, p. 83) thinks that the Roman civilisation spread like a river with many channels which traverse a wide area, but only affect the immediate neighbourhood of their banks. I agree rather with Mommsen’s conclusion (pp. 193, 194)--though the real difference between the two writers is not so very great. The towns, both municipalities and “country towns,” seem to have been thoroughly Romanised. The numerous farms and country-houses (often styled “villas”) are also in nearly every respect Roman, and the very scanty evidence which we possess as to the language used in them favours the idea that it was Latin. Even the villages, such as Pitt-Rivers excavated (_Excavations in Cranborne Chase_, etc., 1887-98), show little survival of native culture. It is to be noted, too, that Celtic inscriptions of Roman date, such as occur occasionally in Gaul (Rhys, _Proc. British Acad._ ii. 275 foll.), are wholly wanting in Britain. Probably, therefore, Roman civilisation came to predominate throughout the lowlands, though not in its more elaborate and splendid forms. There were, however, thinly populated areas where we can trace hardly any population of any sort, Romanised or other, as, for example, the Weald of Kent and Sussex, and a large part of the Midlands (_Vict. Hist. of Warwickshire_, i. 228), while the Cornish, Welsh, and northern hills seem never to have admitted very much Romanisation outside the forts which garrisoned parts of them. The analogies of other western provinces, of Gaul (above, vol. i. p. 101) and Africa (ii. 328), suggest that Celtic speech may have lingered on in such districts for centuries, though not as an element hostile to the Roman; it is also quite probable that Celtic private law and custom survived beside the Roman (L. Mitteis, _Reichsrecht und Volksrecht_, p. 8). But we have no distinct evidence of either fact.

The spellings Ordovici (p. 182 and map) and Cartimandus (pp. 182, 183) are Mommsen’s own choice.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The conception that the Roman and the Parthian empires were two great states standing side by side, and indeed the only ones in existence, dominated the whole Roman East, particularly the frontier-provinces. It meets us palpably in the Apocalypse of John, in which there is a juxtaposition as well of the rider on the white horse with the bow and of the rider on the red horse with the sword (vi. 2, 3) as of the Megistanes and the Chiliarchs (vi. 15, comp. xviii. 23, xix. 18). The closing catastrophe, too, is conceived as a subduing of the Romans by the Parthians bringing back the emperor Nero (ix. 14,