Masinissa
Masinissa, or Masensen, —also spelled Massinissa and Massena—was the first King of Numidia. During his younger years, before he was king, he fought in the Second Punic War, first against the Romans as an ally of Carthage and switching sides. With Roman support, he united the eastern and western Numidian tribes and founded the Kingdom of Numidia, he is well-known for his role as a Roman ally in the Battle of Zama and as husband of Sophonisba, a Carthaginian noblewoman whom he allowed to poison herself to avoid being paraded in a triumph in Rome. He ruled Numidia for some 54 years until dying at about the age of 90, he was vigorous, leading troops until his death and fathering some 44 sons, a staunch ally of Rome. Masinissa's story is told in Livy's Ab Urbe Condita, he is featured in Cicero's Scipio's Dream. His name was found in his tomb of Cirta, modern-day Constantine in Algeria under the form of MSNSN; the Greek historian Polybius, who met him, called him "the best man of all the kings of our time". and wrote that "his greatest and most divine achievement was this: Numidia had been before his time universally unproductive, was looked upon as incapable of producing any cultivated fruits.
He was the first and only man who showed that it could produce cultivated fruits just as well as any other country". In the following centuries, his territory would become known as the breadbasket of Rome. Masinissa is viewed as an icon and an important forefather among modern Berbers. Masinissa was the son of the chieftain Gaia of the Massylii, he was brought up in an ally of his father. At the start of the Second Punic War, Masinissa fought for Carthage against Syphax, the king of the Masaesyli of western Numidia, who had allied himself with the Romans. Masinissa about 17 years old, led an army of Numidian troops and Carthaginian auxiliaries against Syphax's army and won a decisive victory, he was betrothed to the daughter of the Carthaginian general Hasdrubal Gisgo. After his victory over Syphax, Masinissa commanded his skilled Numidian cavalry against the Romans in Spain, where he was involved in the Carthaginian victories of Castulo and Ilorca in 211 BC. After Hasdrubal Barca departed for Italy, Masinissa was placed in command of all the Carthaginian cavalry in Spain, where he fought a successful guerrilla campaign against the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio throughout 208 and 207, while Mago Barca and Hasdrubal Gisgo levied and trained new forces.
In c.206 BC, with fresh reinforcements and Hasdrubal Gisgo—supported by Masinissa's Numidian cavalry—met Scipio at the Battle of Ilipa, where Carthage's power over Hispania was forever broken in arguably Scipio Africanus's most brilliant victory. When Gaia died in 206 BC, his son Masinissa and his brother Oezalces quarreled about the inheritance, Syphax — now an ally of Carthage — was able to conquer considerable parts of the eastern Numidia. Meanwhile, with the Carthaginians having been driven from Hispania, Masinissa concluded that Rome was winning the war against Carthage and therefore decided to defect to Rome, he promised to assist Scipio in the invasion of Carthaginian territory in Africa. This decision was aided by the move by Scipio Africanus to free Masinissa's nephew, whom the Romans had captured when he had disobeyed his uncle and ridden into battle. Having lost the alliance with Masinissa, Hasdrubal started to look for another ally, which he found in Syphax, who married Sophonisba, Hasdrubal's daughter, who until the defection had been betrothed to Masinissa.
The Romans supported Masinissa's claim to the Numidian throne against Syphax, successful in driving Masinissa from power until Scipio invaded Africa in 204. Masinissa joined the Roman forces and participated in the victorious Battle of the Great Plains, after which Syphax was captured. At the Battle of Bagbrades, Scipio overcame Hasdrubal and Syphax and, while the Roman general concentrated on Carthage, Gaius Laelius and Masinissa followed Syphax to Cirta, where he was captured and handed over to Scipio. After the defeat of Syphax, Masinissa married Syphax's wife Sophonisba, but Scipio, suspicious of her loyalty, demanded that she be taken to Rome and appear in the triumphal parade. To save her from such humiliation, Masinissa sent her poison. Masinissa was now accepted as a loyal ally of Rome, was confirmed by Scipio as the king of the Massylii. At the Battle of Zama, Masinissa commanded the cavalry on Scipio's right wing, Scipio delayed the engagement long enough to allow for Masinissa to join him.
With the battle hanging in the balance, Masinissa's cavalry, having driven the fleeing Carthaginian horsemen away and fell onto the rear of the Carthaginian lines. This decided the battle and at once Hannibal's army began to collapse; the Second Punic War was over and for his services Masinissa received the kingdom of Syphax, became king of Numidia. Masinissa was now king of both the Masaesyli, he showed unconditional loyalty to Rome, his position in Africa was strengthened by a clause in the peace treaty of 201 between Rome and Carthage prohibiting the latter from going to war in self-defense without Roman permission. This enabled Masinissa to encroach on the remaining Carthaginian territory as long as he judged that Rome wished to see Carthage further weakened. With Roman backing, Masinissa established his own kingdom of Numidia, west of Carthage, with Cirta — present day Constantine — as its capital city. All of this happened in accordance
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Roman Republic period of the ancient Roman civilization. Ruled by emperors, it had large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus. From the constitutional reforms of Augustus to the military anarchy of the third century, the Empire was a principate ruled from the city of Rome; the Roman Empire was ruled by multiple emperors and divided in a Western Roman Empire, based in Milan and Ravenna, an Eastern Roman Empire, based in Nicomedia and Constantinople. Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until 476 AD, when Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustus after capturing Ravenna and the Roman Senate sent the imperial regalia to Constantinople; the fall of the Western Roman Empire to barbarian kings, along with the hellenization of the Eastern Roman Empire into the Byzantine Empire, is conventionally used to mark the end of Ancient Rome and the beginning of the Middle Ages. The previous Republic, which had replaced Rome's monarchy in the 6th century BC, became destabilized in a series of civil wars and political conflict.
In the mid-1st century BC Julius Caesar was appointed as perpetual dictator and assassinated in 44 BC. Civil wars and proscriptions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesar's adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC; the following year Octavian conquered Ptolemaic Egypt, ending the Hellenistic period that had begun with the conquests of Alexander the Great of Macedon in the 4th century BC. Octavian's power was unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power and the new title Augustus making him the first emperor; the first two centuries of the Empire were a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana. It reached its greatest territorial expanse during the reign of Trajan. A period of increasing trouble and decline began with the reign of Commodus. In the 3rd century, the Empire underwent a crisis that threatened its existence, but was reunified under Aurelian. In an effort to stabilize the Empire, Diocletian set up two different imperial courts in the Greek East and Latin West.
Christians rose to power in the 4th century following the Edict of Milan in 313 and the Edict of Thessalonica in 380. Shortly after, the Migration Period involving large invasions by Germanic peoples and the Huns of Attila led to the decline of the Western Roman Empire. With the fall of Ravenna to the Germanic Herulians and the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476 AD by Odoacer, the Western Roman Empire collapsed and it was formally abolished by emperor Zeno in 480 AD; the Eastern Roman Empire, known in the post-Roman West as the Byzantine Empire, collapsed when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks of Mehmed II in 1453. Due to the Roman Empire's vast extent and long endurance, the institutions and culture of Rome had a profound and lasting influence on the development of language, architecture, philosophy and forms of government in the territory it governed Europe; the Latin language of the Romans evolved into the Romance languages of the medieval and modern world, while Medieval Greek became the language of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Its adoption of Christianity led to the formation of Christendom during the Middle Ages. Greek and Roman art had a profound impact on the late medieval Italian Renaissance, while Rome's republican institutions influenced the political development of republics such as the United States and France; the corpus of Roman law has its descendants in many legal systems of the world today, such as the Napoleonic Code. Rome's architectural tradition served as the basis for Neoclassical architecture. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th century BC, though it did not expand outside the Italian peninsula until the 3rd century BC, it was an "empire" long before it had an emperor. The Roman Republic was not a nation-state in the modern sense, but a network of towns left to rule themselves and provinces administered by military commanders, it was ruled, not by annually elected magistrates in conjunction with the senate. For various reasons, the 1st century BC was a time of political and military upheaval, which led to rule by emperors.
The consuls' military power rested in the Roman legal concept of imperium, which means "command". Successful consuls were given the honorary title imperator, this is the origin of the word emperor since this title was always bestowed to the early emperors upon their accession. Rome suffered a long series of internal conflicts and civil wars from the late second century BC onward, while extending its power beyond Italy; this was the period of the Crisis of the Roman Republic. Towards the end of this era, in 44 BC, Julius Caesar was perpetual dictator before being assassinated; the faction of his assassins was driven from Rome and defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC by an army led by Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son Octavian. Antony and Octavian's division of the Roman world between themselves did not last and Octavian's forces defeated those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, ending the Final War of the Roman Republic. In 27 BC the Senate and People of Rome made Octavian princeps ("first citi
Roman Republic
The Roman Republic was the era of classical Roman civilization beginning with the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom, traditionally dated to 509 BC, ending in 27 BC with the establishment of the Roman Empire. It was during this period that Rome's control expanded from the city's immediate surroundings to hegemony over the entire Mediterranean world. Roman society under the Republic was a cultural mix of Latin and Greek elements, visible in the Roman Pantheon, its political organisation was influenced by the Greek city states of Magna Graecia, with collective and annual magistracies, overseen by a senate. The top magistrates were the two consuls, who had an extensive range of executive, judicial and religious powers. Whilst there were elections each year, the Republic was not a democracy, but an oligarchy, as a small number of large families monopolised the main magistracies. Roman institutions underwent considerable changes throughout the Republic to adapt to the difficulties it faced, such as the creation of promagistracies to rule its conquered provinces, or the composition of the senate.
Unlike the Pax Romana of the Roman Empire, the Republic was in a state of quasi-perpetual war throughout its existence. Its first enemies were its Latin and Etruscan neighbours as well as the Gauls, who sacked the city in 387 BC; the Republic nonetheless demonstrated extreme resilience and always managed to overcome its losses, however catastrophic. After the Gallic Sack, Rome indeed conquered the whole Italian peninsula in a century, which turned the Republic into a major power in the Mediterranean; the Republic's greatest enemy was doubtless Carthage, against. The Punic general Hannibal famously invaded Italy by crossing the Alps and inflicted on Rome two devastating defeats at the Lake Trasimene and Cannae, but the Republic once again recovered and won the war thanks to Scipio Africanus at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC. With Carthage defeated, Rome became the dominant power of the ancient Mediterranean world, it embarked in a long series of difficult conquests, after having notably defeated Philip V and Perseus of Macedon, Antiochus III of the Seleucid Empire, the Lusitanian Viriathis, the Numidian Jugurtha, the great Pontic king Mithridates VI, the Gaul Vercingetorix, the Egyptian queen Cleopatra.
At home, the Republic experienced a long streak of social and political crises, which ended in several violent civil wars. At first, the Conflict of the Orders opposed the patricians, the closed oligarchic elite, to the far more numerous plebs, who achieved political equality in several steps during the 4th century BC; the vast conquests of the Republic disrupted its society, as the immense influx of slaves they brought enriched the aristocracy, but ruined the peasantry and urban workers. In order to solve this issue, several social reformers, known as the Populares, tried to pass agrarian laws, but the Gracchi brothers, Saturninus, or Clodius Pulcher were all murdered by their opponents, the Optimates, keepers of the traditional aristocratic order. Mass slavery caused three Servile Wars. In this context, the last decades of the Republic were marked by the rise of great generals, who exploited their military conquests and the factional situation in Rome to gain control of the political system.
Marius Sulla dominated in turn the Republic. These multiple tensions lead to a series of civil wars. Despite his victory and appointment as dictator for life, Caesar was murdered in 44 BC. Caesar's heir Octavian and lieutenant Mark Antony defeated Caesar's assassins Brutus and Cassius in 42 BC, but turned against each other; the final defeat of Mark Antony and his ally Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, the Senate's grant of extraordinary powers to Octavian as Augustus in 27 BC – which made him the first Roman emperor – thus ended the Republic. Since the foundation of Rome, its rulers had been monarchs, elected for life by the patrician noblemen who made up the Roman Senate; the last Roman king was Lucius Tarquinius Superbus. In the traditional histories, Tarquin was expelled in 509 because his son Sextus Tarquinius had raped the noblewoman Lucretia, who afterwards took her own life. Lucretia's father, her husband Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, Tarquin's nephew Lucius Junius Brutus mustered support from the Senate and army, forced Tarquin into exile in Etruria.
The Senate agreed to abolish kingship. Most of the king's former functions were transferred to two consuls, who were elected to office for a term of one year; each consul had the capacity to act as a check on his colleague, if necessary through the same power of veto that the kings had held. If a consul abused his powers in office, he could be prosecuted. Brutus and Collatinus became Republican Rome's first consuls. Despite Collatinus' role in the creation of the Republic, he belonged to the same family as the former king, was forced to abdicate his office and leave Rome, he was replaced as co-consul by Publius Valerius Publicola. Most modern scholarship describes these events as the quasi-mythological detailing of an aristocratic coup within Tarquin's own family, not a popular revolution, they fit a narrative of a personal vengeance against a tyrant leading to his overthrow, common among Greek cities and theorised by Aristotle
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war is a person, whether a combatant or a non-combatant, held in custody by a belligerent power during or after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1660. Belligerents hold prisoners of war in custody for a range of legitimate and illegitimate reasons, such as isolating them from enemy combatants still in the field, demonstrating military victory, punishing them, prosecuting them for war crimes, exploiting them for their labour, recruiting or conscripting them as their own combatants, collecting military and political intelligence from them, or indoctrinating them in new political or religious beliefs. For most of human history, depending on the culture of the victors, enemy combatants on the losing side in a battle who had surrendered and been taken as a prisoner of war could expect to be either slaughtered or enslaved; the first Roman gladiators were prisoners of war and were named according to their ethnic roots such as Samnite and the Gaul.
Homer's Iliad describes Greek and Trojan soldiers offering rewards of wealth to opposing forces who have defeated them on the battlefield in exchange for mercy, but their offers are not always accepted. Little distinction was made between enemy combatants and enemy civilians, although women and children were more to be spared. Sometimes, the purpose of a battle, if not a war, was to capture a practice known as raptio. Women had no rights, were held as chattel. In the fourth century AD, Bishop Acacius of Amida, touched by the plight of Persian prisoners captured in a recent war with the Roman Empire, who were held in his town under appalling conditions and destined for a life of slavery, took the initiative of ransoming them, by selling his church's precious gold and silver vessels, letting them return to their country. For this he was canonized. During Childeric's siege and blockade of Paris in 464, the nun Geneviève pleaded with the Frankish king for the welfare of prisoners of war and met with a favourable response.
Clovis I liberated captives after Genevieve urged him to do so. Many French prisoners of war were killed during the Battle of Agincourt in 1415; this was done in retaliation for the French killing of the boys and other non-combatants handling the baggage and equipment of the army, because the French were attacking again and Henry was afraid that they would break through and free the prisoners to fight again. In the Middle Ages, a number of religious wars aimed to not only defeat but eliminate their enemies. In Christian Europe, the extermination of heretics was considered desirable. Examples include the Northern Crusades; when asked by a Crusader how to distinguish between the Catholics and Cathars once they'd taken the city of Béziers, the Papal Legate Arnaud Amalric famously replied, "Kill them all, God will know His own". The inhabitants of conquered cities were massacred during the Crusades against the Muslims in the 11th and 12th centuries. Noblemen could hope to be ransomed. In feudal Japan, there was no custom of ransoming prisoners of war, who were for the most part summarily executed.
The expanding Mongol Empire was famous for distinguishing between cities or towns that surrendered, where the population were spared but required to support the conquering Mongol army, those that resisted, where their city was ransacked and destroyed, all the population killed. In Termez, on the Oxus: "all the people, both men and women, were driven out onto the plain, divided in accordance with their usual custom they were all slain"; the Aztecs were at war with neighbouring tribes and groups, with the goal of this constant warfare being to collect live prisoners for sacrifice. For the re-consecration of Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, "between 10,000 and 80,400 persons" were sacrificed. During the early Muslim conquests, Muslims captured large number of prisoners. Aside from those who converted, most were enslaved. Christians who were captured during the Crusades, were either killed or sold into slavery if they could not pay a ransom. During his lifetime, Muhammad made it the responsibility of the Islamic government to provide food and clothing, on a reasonable basis, to captives, regardless of their religion.
The freeing of prisoners was recommended as a charitable act. On certain occasions where Muhammad felt the enemy had broken a treaty with the Muslims, he ordered the mass execution of male prisoners, such as the Banu Qurayza. Females and children of this tribe were divided up as spoils of war by Muhammad; the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War, established the rule that prisoners of war should be released without ransom at the end of hostilities and that they should be allowed to return to their homelands. There evolved the right of parole, French for "discourse", in which a captured officer surrendered his sword and gave his word as a gentleman in exchange for privileges. If he swore not to escape, he could gain the freedom of the prison. If he swore to cease hostilities against the nation who held him captive, he could be repatriated or exchanged but could not serve against his former captors in a military capacity. Ea
Trireme
A trireme was an ancient vessel and a type of galley, used by the ancient maritime civilizations of the Mediterranean the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks and Romans. The trireme derives its name from its three rows of oars, manned with one man per oar; the early trireme was a development of the penteconter, an ancient warship with a single row of 25 oars on each side, of the bireme, a warship with two banks of oars, of Phoenician origin. The word dieres does not appear until the Roman period. According to Morrison and Williams, "It must be assumed the term pentekontor covered the two-level type"; as a ship it was fast and agile, it was the dominant warship in the Mediterranean during the 7th to 4th centuries BC, after which it was superseded by the larger quadriremes and quinqueremes. Triremes played a vital role in the Persian Wars, the creation of the Athenian maritime empire, its downfall in the Peloponnesian War; the term is sometimes used to refer to medieval and early modern galleys with three files of oarsmen per side as triremes.
Depictions of two-banked ships, with or without the parexeiresia, are common in 8th century BC and vases and pottery fragments, it is at the end of that century that the first references to three-banked ships are found. Fragments from an 8th-century relief at the Assyrian capital of Nineveh depicting the fleets of Tyre and Sidon show ships with rams, fitted with oars pivoted at two levels, they have been interpreted as two-decked warships, as triremes. Modern scholarship is divided on the provenance of the trireme, Greece or Phoenicia, the exact time it developed into the foremost ancient fighting ship. Clement of Alexandria in the 2nd century, drawing on earlier works, explicitly attributes the invention of the trireme to the Sidonians. According to Thucydides, the trireme was introduced to Greece by the Corinthians in the late 8th century BC, the Corinthian Ameinocles built four such ships for the Samians; this was interpreted by writers and Diodorus, to mean that triremes were invented in Corinth, the possibility remains that the earliest three-banked warships originated in Phoenicia.
Herodotus mentions that the Egyptian pharaoh Necho II built triremes on the Nile, for service in the Mediterranean, in the Red Sea, but this reference is disputed by modern historians, attributed to a confusion, since "triērēs" was by the 5th century used in the generic sense of "warship", regardless its type. The first definite reference to the use of triremes in naval combat dates to ca. 525 BC, according to Herodotus, the tyrant Polycrates of Samos was able to contribute 40 triremes to a Persian invasion of Egypt. Thucydides meanwhile states that in the time of the Persian Wars, the majority of the Greek navies consisted of penteconters and ploia makrá. In any case, by the early 5th century, the trireme was becoming the dominant warship type of the eastern Mediterranean, with minor differences between the "Greek" and "Phoenician" types, as literary references and depictions of the ships on coins make clear; the first large-scale naval battle where triremes participated was the Battle of Lade during the Ionian Revolt, where the combined fleets of the Greek Ionian cities were defeated by the Persian fleet, composed of squadrons from their Phoenician, Carian and Egyptian subjects.
Athens was at that time embroiled in a conflict with the neighbouring island of Aegina, which possessed a formidable navy. In order to counter this, with an eye at the mounting Persian preparations, in 483/2 BC the Athenian statesman Themistocles used his political skills and influence to persuade the Athenian assembly to start the construction of 200 triremes, using the income of the newly discovered silver mines at Laurion; the first clash with the Persian navy was at the Battle of Artemisium, where both sides suffered great casualties. However, the decisive naval clash occurred at Salamis, where Xerxes' invasion fleet was decisively defeated. After Salamis and another Greek victory over the Persian fleet at Mycale, the Ionian cities were freed, the Delian League was formed under the aegis of Athens; the predominance of Athens turned the League into an Athenian Empire. The source and foundation of Athens' power was her strong fleet, composed of over 200 triremes, it not only secured control of the Aegean Sea and the loyalty of her allies, but safeguarded the trade routes and the grain shipments from the Black Sea, which fed the city's burgeoning population.
In addition, as it provided permanent employment for the city's poorer citizens, the fleet played an important role in maintaining and promoting the radical Athenian form of democracy. Athenian maritime power is the first example of thalassocracy in world history. Aside from Athens, other major naval powers of the era included Syracuse and Corinth. In the subsequent Peloponnesian War, naval battles fought by triremes were crucial in the power balance between Athens and Sparta. Despite numerous land engagements, Athens was defeated through the destruction of her fleet during the Sicilian Expedition, at the Battle of Aegospotami, at the hands of Sparta and her allies. Based on all archeological evidence, the design of the trireme most pushed the technological limits of the ancient world. After gathering the proper timbers and materials it was time to consider the fundamentals of the trireme design; these fundamentals inclu
Utica, Tunisia
Utica was an ancient Phoenician and Carthaginian city located near the outflow of the Medjerda River into the Mediterranean, between Carthage in the south and Hippo Diarrhytus in the north. It is traditionally considered to be the first colony to have been founded by the Phoenicians in North Africa. After Carthage's loss to Rome in the Punic Wars, Utica was an important Roman colony for seven centuries. Today, Utica no longer exists, its remains are located in Bizerte Governorate in Tunisia – not on the coast where it once lay, but further inland because deforestation and agriculture upriver led to massive erosion and the Medjerda River silted over its original mouth. Utica is an unusual latinization of ʿtg; these derived from Phoenician ˁAtiq, cognate with Hebrew ˁatiq. These all mean "Old Town" and contrast the settlement with the colony Carthage, whose own name meant "New Town"; the latinization is a little unusual in that the Latin U more transcribed the letter W in Punic names. Utica was founded as a port located on the trade route leading from Phoenicia to the Straits of Gibraltar and the Atlantic Ocean, facilitating trade in commodities like tin.
The exact founding date of Utica is a matter of controversy. Several classical authors date its foundation to around 1100 BC; the archaeological evidence, suggests a foundation no earlier than the eighth century BC. The inland settlement used Rusucmona on Cape Farina to the northeast as its chief port, although continued silting has rendered the present-day settlement at Ghar el-Melh a small farming community. Although Carthage was founded about 40 km from Utica, records suggest "that until 540 BC Utica was still maintaining political and economic autonomy in relation to its powerful Carthaginian neighbor". By the fourth century BC, Utica came under Punic control, but continued to exist as a privileged ally of Carthage. Soon, commercial rivalry created problems between Utica; this relationship between Carthage and Utica began to disintegrate after the First Punic War, with the outbreak of rebellion among mercenaries who had not received compensation for their service to Carthage. Utica refused to participate in this rebellion, so that the Libyan forces led by Spendius and Matho laid siege to Utica and nearby Hippocritae.
The Carthaginian generals Hanno and Hamilcar came to Utica's defense, managing to raise the siege, but "the severest blow of all… was the defection of Hippacritae and Utica, the only two cities in Libya which had…bravely faced the present war…indeed they never had on any occasion given the least sign of hostility to Carthage." The forces of Carthage proved victorious, forcing Utica and Hippacritae to surrender after a short siege. Utica again defied Carthage in the Third Punic War, when it surrendered to Rome shortly before the breakout of war in 150 BC. After its victory, Rome rewarded Utica by granting it an expanse of territory stretching from Carthage to Hippo; as a result of the war, Rome created a new province of Africa, Utica became its capital, which meant that the governor's residence was there along with a small garrison. Over the following decades Utica attracted Roman citizens who settled there to do business. During the Roman Civil War between the supporters of Pompey and Caesar, the remaining Pompeians, including Cato the Younger, fled to Utica after being defeated at the Battle of Thapsus in 46 BC.
Caesar pursued them to Utica. Cato, the leader of the Pompeians, ensured the escape of his fellow senators and anyone else who desired to leave committed suicide, unwilling to accept the clemency of Caesar. Displaying their fondness for Cato, "the people of Utica...called Cato their saviour and benefactor... And this they continued to do when word was brought that Caesar was approaching, they decked his body in splendid fashion, gave it an illustrious escort, buried it near the sea, where a statue of him now stands, sword in hand". After his death, Cato was given the name of Uticensis, due to the place of his death as well as to his public glorification and burial by the citizens of Utica. Utica obtained the formal status of a municipium in 36 BC and its inhabitants became members of the Quirina tribe; the city was chosen by the Romans as the place where the governor of their new Africa Province was resident, but the silting of the port damaged the importance of Utica. During the reign of Augustus, the seat of provincial government was moved to a since rebuilt Carthage, although Utica did not lose its status as one of the foremost cities in the province.
When Hadrian was emperor, Utica requested to become a full Roman colony, but this request was not granted until Septimius Severus, a native of the Province of Africa, took the throne." Eclipsed by the preeminence of Carthage, Utica was faced with the progressive silting up of its port and consequent isolation in the midst of marshy lands. By converting its activity to further cultivation of its agricultural territory, it prolonged its life right up to the end of ancient times.... Utica had been endowed from the first century B. C. with the Roman buildings essential to comfortable urban life: forum, baths, circus, in addition to dwellings. Most of these structures were placed in the grid of an orthogonal plan which covered a large part of the city. -Marian Holland The city and all the area east of the "Fossatum Africae" was nearly romanised by the time of Septimius Severus. According to historian Theodore Mommsen, all the inhabitants of Utica spoke Latin and practised Christianity in the fourth and early
Numidia
Numidia was an ancient Berber kingdom of the Numidians, located in what is now Algeria and a smaller part of Tunisia and Libya in the Berber world, in North Africa. The polity was divided between Massylii in the east and Masaesyli in the west. During the Second Punic War, king of the Massylii, defeated Syphax of the Masaesyli to unify Numidia into one kingdom; the kingdom began as a sovereign state and alternated between being a Roman province and a Roman client state. It was bordered by Atlantic ocean to the west, Africa Proconsularis to the east, the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Sahara Desert to the south, it is considered to be one of the first major states in the history of the Berber world. The Greek historians referred to these peoples as "Νομάδες", which by Latin interpretation became "Numidae". Historian Gabriel Camps, disputes this claim, favoring instead an African origin for the term; the name appears first in Polybius to indicate the peoples and territory west of Carthage including the entire north of Algeria as far as the river Mulucha, about 160 kilometres west of Oran.
The Numidians were composed of two great tribal groups: the Massylii in eastern Numidia, the Masaesyli in the west. During the first part of the Second Punic War, the eastern Massylii, under their king Gala, were allied with Carthage, while the western Masaesyli, under king Syphax, were allied with Rome. However, in 206 BC, the new king of the eastern Massylii, allied himself with Rome, Syphax of the Masaesyli switched his allegiance to the Carthaginian side. At the end of the war, the victorious Romans gave all of Numidia to Masinissa of the Massylii. At the time of his death in 148 BC, Masinissa's territory extended from Mauretania to the boundary of the Carthaginian territory, southeast as far as Cyrenaica, so that Numidia surrounded Carthage except towards the sea. After the death of the long-lived Masinissa around 148 BC, he was succeeded by his son Micipsa; when Micipsa died in 118 BC, he was succeeded jointly by his two sons Hiempsal I and Adherbal and Masinissa's illegitimate grandson, Jugurtha, of Ancient Libyan origin, popular among the Numidians.
Hiempsal and Jugurtha quarrelled after the death of Micipsa. Jugurtha had Hiempsal killed. By 112 BC, Jugurtha resumed his war with Adherbal, he incurred the wrath of Rome in the process by killing some Roman businessmen who were aiding Adherbal. After a brief war with Rome, Jugurtha surrendered and received a favourable peace treaty, which raised suspicions of bribery once more; the local Roman commander was summoned to Rome to face corruption charges brought by his political rival Gaius Memmius. Jugurtha was forced to come to Rome to testify against the Roman commander, where he was discredited once his violent and ruthless past became known, after he had been suspected of murdering a Numidian rival. War broke out between Numidia and the Roman Republic and several legions were dispatched to North Africa under the command of the Consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus; the war dragged out into a long and endless campaign as the Romans tried to defeat Jugurtha decisively. Frustrated at the apparent lack of action, Metellus' lieutenant Gaius Marius returned to Rome to seek election as Consul.
Marius was elected, returned to Numidia to take control of the war. He sent his Quaestor Lucius Cornelius Sulla to neighbouring Mauretania in order to eliminate their support for Jugurtha. With the help of Bocchus I of Mauretania, Sulla captured Jugurtha and brought the war to a conclusive end. Jugurtha was placed in the Tullianum. Jugurtha was executed by the Romans in 104 BC, after being paraded through the streets in Gaius Marius' Triumph. After the death of Jugurtha, the far west of Numidia was added to the lands of Bocchus I, king of Mauretania. A rump kingdom continued to be governed by native princes, it appears that on the death of King Gauda in 88 BC, the kingdom was divided into a larger eastern kingdom and a smaller western kingdom. The kings of the east minted coins, while no known coins of the western kings survive; the western kings may have been vassals of the eastern. The civil war between Caesar and Pompey brought an end to independent Numidia in 46 BC; the western kingdom between the Sava and Ampsaga rivers passed to Bocchus II, while the eastern kingdom became a Roman province.
The remainder of the western kingdom plus the city of Cirta, which may have belonged to either kingdom, became an autonomous principality under Publius Sittius. Between 44 and 40 BC, the old western kingdom was once again under a Numidian king, who killed Sittius and took his place, he was himself killed. After the death of Arabio, Numidia became the Roman province of Africa Nova except for a brief period when Augustus restored Juba II as a client king. Eastern Numidia was annexed in 46 BC to create Africa Nova. Western Numidia was annexed after the death of its last king, Arabio, in 40 BC, the two provinces were united with Tripolitana by Emperor Augustus, to create Africa Proconsularis. In AD 40, the western portion of Africa Proconsularis, including its legionary garrison, was placed under an imperial legatus, in effect became a separate province of Numidia, though the
