Carthage and the regions composing the eastern group of the Atlas. Among the numerous conjectures which have been made as to the etymology of the term Africa (Ἀφρική) may be quoted that which derives it from the Semitic radical פּרד (“separate”), Africa being considered, in this connexion, as a Phoenician settlement “separated” from the mother country, Asiatic Phoenicia. It has also been held that the word Africa comes from friqi, farikia (the country of fruit). The best hypothesis in the writer’s opinion is that maintained by Charles Tissot, who sees in the word “Africa” the name of the great Berber tribe, the Aourigha (whose name would have been pronounced Afarika), the modern Aouraghen, now driven back into the Sahara, but in ancient times the principal indigenous element of the African empire of Carthage (Tissot, Géogr. comp. i. 389). Thus Africa was originally, in the eyes of the Romans and Carthaginians alike, the country inhabited by the great tribe of Berbers or Numidians called Afarik. Cyrenaica, on the east, attached to Egypt, was then excluded from it, and, similarly, Mauretania, on the west.
At the time of the Third Punic War the Africa of the Carthaginians was but a fragment of their ancient native empire. It comprised the territory bounded by a vague line running from the mouth of the Tusca (Wad el Kebir), opposite the island of Tabraca (Tabarca), as far as the town of Thenae (Tina), at the mouth of the Gulf of Gabes. The rest of Africa had passed into the hands of the kings of Numidia, who were allies of the Romans.
After the capture of Carthage by Scipio (146 B.C.) this territory was erected into a Roman province, and a trench, the fossa regia, was dug to mark the boundary of the Roman province of Africa and the dominions of the Numidian princes. There have been discovered (1907) the remains of this ditch protected by a low wall or a stone dyke; some of the boundary stones which marked its course, and inscriptions mentioning it, have also been found. From Testur on the Mejerda the fossa regia can be followed by these indications for several miles along the Jebel esh-Sheid. The ditch ran northward to Tabarca and southward to Tina. The importance of the discoveries lies in the fact that the ditch which in later times divided the provinces of Africa vetus and Africa nova was at the time of the Third Punic War the boundary of Carthaginian territory (R. Cagnat, “Le fossé des frontières romaines” in Mélanges Boissier, 1905, p. 227; L. Poinssot in Comptes rendus de l’Acad. des Inscript. et Belles Lettres, 1907, p. 466; Classical Review, 1907, December, p. 255). The government of the Roman province thus delimited was entrusted to a praetor or propraetor, of whom several are now known, e.g. P. Sextilius, propraetor Africae, according to coins of Hadrumetum of the year 94 B.C. The towns which had fought on the side of the Romans during the Third Punic War were declared civitates liberae, and became exceedingly prosperous. They were Utica (Bu Shatir), Hadrumetum (Susa), Thapsus (Dimas), Leptis Minor (Lemta), Achulla (Badria), Uzalis (about 11 m. from Utica) and Theudalis. Those towns, however, which had remained faithful to Carthage were destroyed, like Carthage itself.
After the Jugurthine war in 106, the whole of the regio Tripolitana, comprising Leptis Magna (Lebda), Oea (Tripoli), Sabrata, and the other towns on the littoral of the two Syrtes, appears to have been annexed to the Roman province in a more or less regular manner (Tissot ii. 21). The battle of Thapsus in 46 made the Romans definitely masters of Numidia, and the spheres of administration were clearly marked out. Numidia was converted into a new province called “Africa Nova,” and of this province the historian Sallust was appointed proconsul and invested with the imperium. From that time the old province of Africa was known as “Africa Vetus” or “Africa Propria.”
This state of affairs, however, lasted but a short time. In 31 B.C. Octavius gave up Numidia, or Africa Nova, to King Juba II. Five years later Augustus gave Mauretania and some Gaetulian districts to Juba, and received in exchange Numidia, which thus reverted to direct Roman control. Numidia, however, no longer formed a distinct government, but was attached to the old province of Africa. From 25 B.C. the Roman province of Africa comprised the whole of the region between the mouth of the Ampsaga (Wad Rummel, Wad el Kebir) on the west, and the two tumuli called the altars of the Philaeni, the immutable boundary between Tripolitana and Cyrenaica, on the east (Tissot ii. 261). In the partition of the government of the provinces of the Roman empire between the senate and the emperor, Africa fell to the senate, and was henceforth administered by a proconsul. Subordinate to him were the legati pro consule, who were placed at the head of districts called dioceses. At first there were only three dioceses: Carthaginiensis, Hipponiensis (headquarters Hippo Diarrhytus, now Bizerta), and Numidica (headquarters Cirta, now Constantine). At a later date the diocesis Hadrumetina was formed, and perhaps at some date unknown the diocesis Tripolitana.
The province of Africa was the only senatorial province whose governor had originally been invested with military powers. The proconsul of Africa, in fact, had command of the legio III. Augusta and the auxiliary corps. But in A.D. 37 Caligula deprived the proconsul of his military powers and gave them to the imperial legate (legatus Augusti pro praetore provinciae Africae), who was nominated directly by the emperor, and whose special duty it was to guard the frontier zone (Tacitus, Hist. iv. 48; Dio Cass. lix. 20). The headquarters of the imperial legate were originally at Cirta and afterwards at Lambaesa (Lambessa). The military posts were drawn up in echelon along the frontier of the desert, especially along the southern slopes of the Aures, as far as Ad Majores (Besseriani), and on the Tripolitan frontier as far as Cydamus (Ghadames), forming an immense arc extending from Cyrenaica to Mauretania. A network of military routes, constructed and kept in repair by the soldiers, led from Lambaesa in all directions, and stretched along the frontier as far as Leptis Magna, passing Theveste (Tebessa), Thenae and Tacape (Gabès). The powers of the proconsul, however, extended scarcely beyond the ancient Africa Vetus and the towns on the littoral. Towards 194 Septimius Severus completed the reform of Caligula by detaching from the province of Africa the greater part of Numidia to constitute a special province governed by a procurator, subordinate to the imperial legate and resident at Cirta (Tissot ii. 34). This province was called Numidia Cirtensis, as opposed to Numidia Inferior or proconsular Numidia.
In Diocletian’s great reform of the administrative system of the empire, the whole of Roman Africa, with the exception of Mauretania Tingitana (which was attached to the province of Spain), constituted a single diocese subdivided into six provinces: Zeugitana (Carthage), Byzacium (Hadrumetum, now Susa), Numidia Cirtensis (Cirta, Constantine), Tripolitana (Tripolis), Mauretania Sitifensis (Sitifis, Setif), and Mauretania Caesariensis (Caesarea, now Cherchel). These provinces were administered, according to circumstances, by a praeses of senatorial rank, a legatus pro praetore, or a vir clarissimus consularis. Some changes were eventually necessitated by the wars with the Moors and the Vandals. By a treaty concluded in 476, the emperor Zeno recognized Genseric as master of all Africa. Reconquered by Belisarius in 534, Africa formed, under the name of praefectura Africae, one of the great administrative districts of the Byzantine empire. It was subdivided into six provinces, which were placed under the authority of the praetorian prefect of Africa. These provinces were Zeugitana (the former Proconsularis), Carthage, Byzacium, Tripolitana, Numidia and Mauretania. The civil government was carried on by consulares or praesides, while the military government was in the hands of four duces militum, who made strenuous efforts to drive out the barbarians. The country was studded thickly with burgi (small forts) and clausurae (long walls), the ruins of which still subsist. In 647 the Arabs penetrated into Ifrikia, which was destined to fall for ever out of the grasp of the Romans. In 697 Carthage was taken.
The bulk of the population of Roman Africa was invariably composed of three chief elements: the indigenous Berber tribes, the ancient Carthaginians of Phoenician origin and the Roman colonists. The Berber tribes, whose racial unity is attested by their common spoken language and by the comparatively numerous Berber inscriptions that have come down to us, bore
