Chapter VI: Part 6

Our ideas of the Roman Empire are perhaps coloured by the title of Gibbon’s great work. We are disposed to think that its decline began with its establishment. Gibbon had always at the back of his mind the belief that Christianity was the cause of its ultimate ruin, and that the Empire began to totter on the day when the first Roman citizen was baptised a Christian. But for two or three hundred years, though the Empire was frequently torn by political dissensions, its material prosperity was very great. We know now that it was ruined in the end by its financial errors, its unwise and unjust system of land taxation, the grasping greed of Treasury officials and the anxiety of upstart Emperors to gratify their supporters in the army and the Roman mob at anybody’s cost.

It is a vice of civilizations to believe themselves invulnerable. As late as the fifth century it was inconceivable to a Roman gentleman that the mighty structure could be swept away; and it is perhaps true that even then it might have been saved by a return to sounder systems of finance. Even so to-day the European nations are arming to the teeth against each other, instead of husbanding their resources and concerting measures of defence against races more numerous and more prolific. The uprising of the Asiatic peoples is a fact to which we cannot be other than wilfully blind. A beginning of the trouble may be upon us at any minute.

Timgad was built by the soldiers of the Third Legion, then stationed at Tebessa. Its head-quarters were shortly afterwards moved to Lambessa, and during the second and third centuries the frontier outposts were gradually pushed forward. They occupied a line on the south side of the Aurès range, extending to the south and south-east of Biskra and then branching north-west to Bou-Saida. At least in some districts a ditch and rampart marked the limits of the Empire.

Lambessa grew into a large city said to have contained 60,000 inhabitants. Its considerable ruins, of which the most important are the Prætorium and certain arches, are visible to-day. The importance of the position is realized by the French, who have large barracks and a force of 4000 men at Batna, only a few miles off. Striking evidence of the success of Rome’s treatment of subject races is to be found in the fact that with all the wealth of numerous great cities to protect, her military force in North Africa consisted only of one legion of 5500 men and auxiliary forces of infantry and cavalry, making a total of 15,000 men. At first the legionaries were raised in Europe, chiefly in Gaul, but in the second century they were recruited entirely among the indigenous population. Retired soldiers were granted lands and exemptions on the condition that their sons enlisted. In this way towns like Lambessa, half military, half commercial, grew up. The actual number of emigrants from Italy was small; with her declining population she had no emigrants to send.

There is, therefore, reason to believe that the inhabitants of such cities as Timgad were not to any appreciable extent colonists from Europe; they were rather Romanized Berbers. The names as they appear in inscriptions corroborate this. They are not Latin, if Latin in form. This point is of great importance in considering not only the nature of the Roman rule in North Africa, but also the history and possibilities of the Berber population. They were Romanized once, they are Arabized to-day; what may they be to-morrow?

As we stand in the Forum of Timgad to-day, we may reflect that this noble city was built and inhabited by the ancestors of the gabbling native crowd which is holding its market at the gate. Doubtless in their simple minds these robed figures are wondering what in the world we come for. They must be aware that it is not a religious exercise; we have our holy places to which they observe that some of us betake ourselves on Sunday mornings; no Christian marabout lies buried here, and we are therefore not votaries making a pilgrimage. Yet is our conduct not mere levity; we wander about with little books in our hands and are very earnest and sometimes vociferous to our companions. Perhaps the most enlightened native opinion inclines to the belief that we are working a spell or enchantment, it may be for the benefit of our motor-cars, which we bring with us to the gate.

Rome, the great mother, welcomed all to her bosom, and it seems that all were glad to come. Little by little the African townships became Latin or Roman municipalities. Roman citizenship became the ambition and the pride of their inhabitants. No higher honour could be inscribed on a tombstone than _Civitatem Romanam consecutus_. And the Roman religion helped the process of consolidation. Olympus was no close borough. There was always room for another deity. We know, in fact, that the Romans were ever ready to welcome a fresh cult. It was the political, not the religious attitude of the Christians which brought them within the reach of the law and under the displeasure of the Emperors. So the Berbers’ gods were Romanized like themselves. Baal Ammon became Saturnus Augustus. The open sanctuaries gave way to closed temples of classical design. Human sacrifice was abandoned. And the Berbers learnt to raise shrines to the Roman allegorical deities, Concord, Fortune, Peace, and Victory; above all to worship the existing order in the divine person of the Emperor. His personal character had nothing whatever to do with this. The infamous Caracalla was the object of as much veneration as the philosopher saint Marcus Aurelius. At the beginning of the third century Africa gave many of its sons to the purple. Macrinus, who attained it by the murder of Caracalla, was a native of the district of Cæsarea. His successor, Elagabalus, of execrated memory, was the son of a former commandant of the Third Legion. And the Gordians, representing as they did the noblest blood in Rome, the blood of the Gracchi and of Trajan, came to the throne from the proconsulate of Africa. Concerning the younger Gordian Gibbon has left us a memorable sentence, which at once exhibits the antithetical bias of his style, and a certain sly humour of which he was master. “His manners were less pure, but his character was equally amiable with that of his father. Twenty-two acknowledged concubines, and a library of sixty-two thousand volumes attested the variety of his inclinations; and from the productions which he left behind him, it appears that the former as well as the latter were intended for use rather than for ostentation.[9] The Roman people acknowledged in the features of the younger Gordian the resemblance of Scipio Africanus, recollected with pleasure that his mother was the granddaughter of Antoninus Pius, and rested the public hope on those latent virtues which had hitherto, as they fondly imagined, lain concealed in the luxurious indolence of a private life.”

Footnote 9:

“By each of his concubines the younger Gordian left three or four
children. His literary productions, though less numerous, were by no
means contemptible.”—Note to Gibbon.

Timgad is situate thirty-four miles to the east of Batna, on the fine modern road which proceeds through the Aurès range to Khenchela and Ain-Beida. You may cover the distance in a motor-car within the hour, and you will pass on the way the ruins of Lambessa. These, however, are scarcely worth the prolonged attention of anyone who is not an archæologist, and such picturesque qualities as they may possess are ruined by the proximity of a huge convict prison. The ordinary sightseer, snatching a few hours between two trains, will hasten on to Timgad. The drive itself is very interesting. The road is undulating and at one point ascends to a considerable altitude, and in its way the scenery is impressive. We traverse a great rolling plain which from end to end is one vast cornfield. There is a bare range of hills to the north, and to the south the Aurès mountains, guardians of the desert, with the snow still, in March, lying among their topmost cedars. At the highest point of the road we meet a driving storm of sleet. We are inclined to resent the general treelessness of the landscape, but much may be forgiven to a corn-growing country, and imagination revels in what must be its glory when the crop is ripe for harvesting. But for its fertility the general contour of the country has a very South African appearance. The soil appears to be “rather light,” and, no doubt, nothing but the copious rainfall which the Aurès mountains bring redeems it from the miserable barrenness of the high plateaux to the south of Algiers.

At last you come to Timgad, and you see at a glance that you are face to face with what the Americans call “a big proposition.” A whole hill-side is covered with the dry bones of a town—a town of which the top seems to have been sliced off, with here and there groups of columns or an arch or two rising from the dismantled mass.

It has been given to few great towns to spring into being at one leap. The growth of towns is usually that of mundane things in general, a gradual process liable to interference from many exterior influences. But Timgad rose full armed from the fiat of the Emperor, as Athene from the brain of Zeus. Trajan said, “Let there be a city,” and there was a city. It was no mushroom growth to serve a temporary purpose. It lasted more or less intact for six hundred years, and but for the hand of destroying man it might have lasted six thousand. This is its dominating note,—its huge, its almost unnecessary solidity. And from the circumstances of its birth it presents a fine example of Roman town-planning. British municipal corporations which are concerned in putting into practice our newborn aspirations in such matters should not omit to send a deputation to study Timgad on the spot.

But perhaps even with the disquieting possibility of a foreign raid on our shores, denied by our politicians with such emphasis that we are led to believe in its existence, it is not necessary for us to base the plan of our towns on the arrangements of a camp. Such was the underlying plan of Timgad. It was divided, as was the conventional Roman camp, into four parts by two main intersecting streets. That which led from east to west was called _decumanus_, that which pointed north and south _cardo_. The former was a portion of the main road from Lambessa to Tebessa, and was doubtless the most used in the town. Its solid pavement shows the wear of wheels, as do the streets of Pompeii. It was naturally at the junction of these streets that the chief buildings were situate. Here is the Forum, with the Theatre behind it and the Municipal Library in front. Looking east from the Forum along the _decumanus_ we see the magnificent Triumphal Arch, the most impressive monument in the town. It is also the best preserved, and thanks to its existence the attention of scholars was called to Timgad in the first instance. With the aid of the excellent and well-illustrated handbook prepared by M. Albert Ballu, Architecte en chef des Monuments historiques de l’Algerie, the visitor will be able to identify and study the whole of the works excavated and restored. Probably most visitors to Timgad will have previously seen Pompeii, and will have some general acquaintance with the arrangements of a Roman town and the nature of its public buildings. Timgad will introduce them to some new features; of its Public Library and the romance of its discovery I shall speak later; it has a remarkably complete series of markets; and the public conveniences behind the Forum will interest those who are concerned about sanitary matters.

However satiated with the wonders of the town itself the visitor should not omit to visit the Museum. Here amid the usual assemblage of mediocre Roman antiquities he will find some mosaic pavements of the highest excellence.

Perhaps we are most of us disposed to be more interested in comparatively trivial matters of decoration and so forth than in the structure and disposal of important edifices. We are not all architects and town-planners. And here we may take especial delight in a little piece of evidence that even in this frontier city life was not all strenuous. On a stone of the Forum are graven the following words:—

VENARI LAVARI
LUDERE RIDERE
OCCEST VIVERE

“Hunting, bathing, play and laughter,—such is life.” This symmetrical arrangement of letters is divided by a device consisting of a vase of flowers surmounted by a bird. It speaks to us across the ages a pleasant message; in such happy human touches Timgad is less rich than Pompeii. And perhaps neither town has anything so delightful as the mosaics found in a bath and a stable at Oued Atmenia between Constantine and Sétif, on the site of a considerable Roman country house. The mosaics in the baths depict various incidents of rural life;—hunting scenes in which huntsmen and hounds are named, a garden scene with a lady spinning under a palm tree. One mosaic represents six favourite horses with inscriptions recording their names and qualities;—with Pullentianus is stabled Altus, “unus es ut mons exultas”—"you have no peer, you leap mountain-high"; Delicatus, “the gentle one,” stands alone; Titas, “the giant,” shares a manger with Polydoxus, “the glorious”; “vincas non vincas te amamus Polydoxe,”—"win or lose we love you, Polydoxus." In a corner by himself stands Scholasticus, “the Scholar.” In the scene representing a stag-hunt, the master himself appears with his hounds, Fidelis and Castus. Other mosaics represent the farm, the fish-ponds with aquatic plants, the quarters of the huntsmen and the mansion-house itself. This is a large building with several storeys and numerous windows, surmounted by a balcony or awning. The buildings are roofed with square red tiles, and chimneys appear below the ridge. “This remarkable series of mosaics gives some insight into Roman life and customs in North Africa at the close of the fourth century, and bears striking testimony to the peaceful condition of the country in the declining years of the Empire. Sixteen centuries have passed since Pompeianus presided over this lordly retreat, as a patron of the turf and a lover of sport in all its aspects. A few years after his decease the disturbing influence of the invading Vandals must have rendered the maintenance of such an establishment an absolute impossibility, and one can picture the life work of this distinguished Roman neglected, abandoned, and finally becoming a mere hunting-ground for Vandal or Byzantine, Arab or Moor.”[10]

Footnote 10:

Graham, “Roman Africa,” 1902, p. 294.

It has often been suggested that the great prosperity of this region under the Empire was due to a climate superior to that of to-day; that there was in fact a more abundant rainfall and a more equable temperature. The Romans left us no weather statistics (an essentially modern passion), and such evidence as we have appears to be against the theory. The lakes in the province of Constantine were no greater than they are to-day; Roman ruins on their banks attest this. Roman bridges exist here and there throughout the country, and they were not designed to span wider rivers or to resist heavier floods. But this does not settle the matter. It is certain that there was far more timber; the Arab has continually destroyed and he does not plant. The rainfall of to-day is probably less continuous and more uncertain. Yet we cannot believe that the climate is seriously changed. Sallust complains that in Africa both sky and earth have too little water. But the Romans made the best of what there was. The remains of their canals and cisterns are everywhere. In the country to the south of Sétif they dug hundreds of wells, many of which still exist. They barred the course of rivers and created reservoirs. Their extensive works of irrigation are described by Procopius, and appear to be exactly similar to those now in use. Elaborate water-rights existed. A monument found at Lambasba sets forth the number of olives and fruit trees which every farmer possessed and the number of hours of running water to which he was entitled. This system of reckoning a right to water-supply by hours is still in vogue in the island of Madeira, and probably elsewhere. Every effort was made to encourage planting. Exemptions from taxation for a certain number of years were granted to cultivators who planted vines or olives, or grafted the wild olive. Olive oil was exported to Rome in enormous quantities; fragments of jars found in the Tiber bear the mark of Tubusuctu, a town near Bougie. Such facts go to show that the great prosperity of North Africa was rather due to intelligent use of its resources than to any superiority of those resources. This prosperity seems to have reached its culminating point under the dynasty of Septimius Severus, himself a native of Africa. The fact that he died at York illustrates the extent of his empire. He and his son Caracalla showered favours on their compatriots, as numerous inscriptions attest.

Arab writers of the seventh century bear ample testimony to the fertility of the territory which had fallen so easily into their hands. From Carthage to Tangier, a thousand miles east and west, the whole country was clothed with olive woods, and it was said that you could walk from village to village beneath a roof of foliage. Therein they have written the condemnation of their successors. A pleasant story is told that the Arab chief who defeated Gregorius expressed his amazement at the richness of the land. “Whence comes this wealth?” he said. A peasant picked up an olive and laid it before the conqueror, saying, “From this.” And he added that the Byzantines who had no olives in their country were Africa’s best customers.

Timgad is interesting and impressive in itself; in general as a town surviving through the ages almost untouched at least in its ground plan; and in particular for its several very uncommon and very informing details. But it is even more noteworthy in its suggestiveness. It flashes to us across a yawning chasm a message from a distant past, a message from a civilization not essentially different from our own; a civilization based on ordered liberty and individual effort, on public spirit and service, on private wealth amassed in agricultural and commercial enterprise; anticipating in its municipal buildings and in the dwellings of its citizens, rich and poor, with sufficient resemblance the conditions of our own life, public and domestic; yet reckoned in the lapse of centuries and the generations of men of an almost incredible remoteness, a remoteness emphasized, as everything is emphasized in this land of staring contrasts, by the hopeless barbarism and neglect which have filled the intervening gulf. Yet there are differences. The city stood on the very frontier of the Empire, but it was not built as men build in such situations to-day. Its solidity and magnificence suggest great local pride, the pride of wealthy citizens, who preferred to adorn their own city to spending their money as strangers in the “smart” world of Italy, who chose rather to rule in Africa than to serve in Rome; and they are evidence of provincial prosperity and contentment during that great second century which Gibbon regarded as the happiest period mankind had known. And we cannot suppress our surprise that the very existence of such a town is scarcely known to us from historical sources. If it were not for its ruins very few among scholars would have heard the mean of Thamagudi. In any endeavour to picture to ourselves the Empire as a whole such a fact is of great significance. And with such throbbing life at its extremities it is difficult to regard the heart as unsound.

The contemplation of such a town as Timgad helps us to realize the compelling force of Rome’s unequalled genius. On this remote frontier of her Empire we may trace to-day the same motives in building—all that meets the eye—which were dominant in the mother city. “In every branch of art, whether in sculpture, painting as displayed in the decorative forms of mosaic, or in architectural design, the same monumental remains await our coming; the basilica, the amphitheatre, the triumphal arch; the aqueduct and the fountain; the bridge, the temple and the tomb. They stand before us as examples of dignity of conception, unerringness of line, justness of proportion, fitness of purpose and soundness of construction.”[11] We see nothing but the remains of these buildings, but we may assume from them that in more vital matters,—in law, in public life, in the family and in individual habits the pattern set by the capital was equally predominant. And we may further reflect that Rome’s influence was not merely geographical in extent; it did not perish with her fall. Modern civilization is essentially Roman. The Roman’s “laws, his language, his literature, his festivals, even his calendar, keep their ground.” The Roman tradition is ingrained in our minds and conduct, and in small things as in great we unconsciously and as a matter of course pursue the Roman model. And it may be that the desperate struggle for the hegemony of Europe—and Africa—now proceeding is heralding the evolution of another Empire on Roman lines.

Footnote 11:

Graham, “Roman Africa,” p. 304.

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_XI—A PUBLIC LIBRARY_

A romantic find—A municipal library of the third century—A Roman
Carnegie—Christian Africa—The Donatists—Genseric the Vandal—
Justinian—Timgad and Pompeii.

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“They say that scholars thronged the column’d court;
To drain reluctant learning’s cup they sought;
Lo! all to utter nothingness have passed,
Alike for book and scholar life is short.”

Among the buildings unearthed at Timgad there is one which, from its nature and the fact that it is unique, or almost unique, is especially interesting, and merits particular attention. The learned world has long been aware that the Public Library, which is a comparatively recent addition to most of our own towns, was a Roman institution. The allusions of Latin authors tell us so much; there were twenty-eight public libraries at Rome in the fourth century; and we gather from inscriptions that there is nothing original about Mr. Carnegie, except the extent of his munificence. The public libraries of provincial cities were often due to the liberality of wealthy citizens, and once established they were frequently enriched by the gifts and bequests of others. By a succession of fortunate accidents, which happily illustrate the romantic side of excavation, the Public Library of Timgad has been found and identified beyond question. This fact in itself gives a very special distinction to the ruins.

In 1901, in clearing a block of buildings in the Cardo, not far from the principal gate of the Forum, the nature of which was unknown, the excavators found a broken portion of an inscription. It seemed to refer to the dedication of the building as a public institution, but threw no light on its nature. It was vaguely considered to be a school or _salle de réunion_. The mutilated inscription was as follows:—

VINTIANI FLAVI RO
MENTO SUO REIPUBLICAE
SIUM PATRIAE SUAE LE
EX IS CCCC MIL. NUM
CTUM EST

This merely indicated that the building had been erected at a cost of 400,000 sesterces, or about £4000, as a result of a legacy of one Q. F. Ro——.

In 1904, in the course of some digging in a neighbouring house, a little to the north, a second fragment of this inscription was found. It fitted exactly to the left-hand side of the former fragment, and read as follows:—

TE M IVLI Q
AD TESTA
VGADEN
OTHECAE
A PERFE

This was very tantalizing; it did not explain the exact object of the building, but it proved that it could only be something of which the Latin name ended in the letters OTHECA. Now in the Latin language there are five such words;—_pinacotheca_, a picture gallery; _apotheca_, a wine-shop; _oporotheca_, a store-room for fruit; _zotheca_, an apartment with niches for statuary; _bibliotheca_, a library. Of these the only words at all applicable were the two last. Between them the usual controversy of _savants_ arose; much could be said, and was said, on either side. From the first the advocates of the library seemed to have the best of it. They based their arguments on the nature of the building. It occupies with its dependencies a rectangular space measuring 77 by 80 feet. Its principal front, facing east, is composed of a portico in the form of a letter U sustained by twelve columns of white calcareous stone, framing a court which opens on to the street. On each side of the portico was an entrance to two partially open chambers, bounded by two side streets leading to the Cardo. Behind these was a great central hall with a room on either side of it, each having a niche at the further end. The termination of the hall was of semicircular form; on each side of it were six detached columns of white marble, corresponding to the same number of pilasters in the wall, between each side pair of which was a square recess. In the middle of the semicircle was a larger and deeper recess, which doubtless contained a statue. The advocates of the _zotheca_ theory urged that the main purpose of the building was to be the shrine of an important statue, bequeathed by Quintianus Flavus Ro—— to his mother city. The case for a library seemed stronger and more attractive. It was suggested that the rectangular recesses were receptacles for volumes or rolls of papyrus, and that benches or steps which led up to them from the centre of the building were intended to serve as seats for readers. The detached columns were considered to have supported two upper galleries containing a second set of bookcases, while the great niche at the end was an architectural feature, doubtless containing a statue of Minerva. The head of such a statue was found in the neighbourhood. The two side rooms were held to be further store-rooms for books; one of them, having a door into the street, perhaps reserved for the use of the librarian. There are indications of recesses in their walls also. The great hall, it was observed, was exceptionally well lighted by a skylight in the vaulted roof of its semicircular portion, and therefore very suitable for reading.

The question was settled in 1906,—on the 17th of March, at five p.m.,—as M. Ballu records with exulting precision. In making an experimental hole beside the Cardo, a workman drove his pick against a fragment of inscribed stone, which proved to be the missing piece containing the first portion of the inscription. The supporters of the library theory were right. The words on the stone were as follows:—

EX LIBERALITA
GATIANI. C.M.V. QV
COLONIAE THAM
GAVIT OPUS BIBLI
CVRANTE REPVBLIC

“There is no necessity,” says M. Ballu, “to tell with what joy we received a telegram announcing this discovery. It was the consecration of our suppositions, certitude succeeding to probabilities, which had nevertheless not left much room for doubt. It was, above all, a revelation of the arrangements of those ancient Roman libraries of which so many Latin authors speak; but as to the construction of which we possessed no evidence.”

The full inscription is to the following effect:—

“Out of the funds bequeathed by Marcus Julius Quintianus Flavus Rogatianus, of senatorial memory, by his will to the colony of Thamagudi his mother city, the erection of a library has been completed at a cost of 400,000 sesterces, under the direction of the city authority.”

The name of this benefactor is otherwise unknown. The building which bears it was well built of fine materials, with marble columns, and marble veneerings to the walls, of which copious fragments have been found. Among these fragments are some of particularly fine coloured marbles which perhaps adorned the niche in which stood the statue of the presiding goddess. The pavement, which remains, is of a very finished type.

It is not possible to assign a precise date to the building, but it is considered to be of the third century. It doubtless took the place of an _insula_, or large private house isolated by four streets, of which other examples line the Cardo. It occupies a rather larger space than these houses; the semicircular portion of the hall extends into the back street, and on the south side the normal width of the street is reduced by it.

A somewhat fanciful calculation has been made of the number of books which the library might contain; and the figure of 6800 for the interior hall, and 16,200 for the other chambers, has been arrived at. This seems to be carrying reconstitution a little too far.

There are some to whom Timgad is the most interesting place in Algeria; to many antiquaries, and perhaps to many of that large class which is concerned one way or another about all that appertains to books, this Public Library, identified beyond all cavil by such happy fortune, will be Timgad’s most interesting building.

It may be noted that about the time of the discovery of this library, the Austrian Archæological Institute, in the course of excavations on the site of Ephesus, found a building in many respects similar to this one. An inscription in Greek and Latin left no doubt that it was a library. Its form is rectangular instead of semicircular, but it possesses a niche at the end for the statue of Minerva, and the walls contain similar recesses for the reception of books. It has a portico in front, but lacks the side chambers which occur at Timgad.

The interest of Timgad, and its part in illustrating history, are not exhausted by a view of those buildings of the second and third centuries which mark the period of its greatness. If in the troublous times which followed it suffered, yet it played a part in African affairs until the Arab conquest. To the understanding of its monuments some slight acquaintance with events is necessary.

During the latter part of the third century two processes were at work in Africa, the formation of great estates out of the ruin of small proprietors, and the spread of Christianity. The two were not unconnected. The new religion attracted all who were dissatisfied with the existing order. It ran like a flame through Barbary. It produced three great men: Tertullian in the second century, Cyprian in the third, and Augustine in the fourth. But the movement throughout was more political and social than religious. It was based among the Berber population rather on discontent than conviction. With the official recognition of Christianity under Constantine its attraction as a symbol of revolt disappeared. A substitute was found in schism. The curious inter-workings of finance, politics and religion have never been more fully illustrated. The misery of the cultivators under the wretched financial system of Rome has not been accorded its due weight as a factor in the most extraordinary event in history, the conversion of the Empire to Christianity.

Even under Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, the schism of the Donatists, destined to ruin Roman Africa, grew to a head. It arose from a personal dispute as to the position of a bishop named Donatus; if there were any differences on points of doctrine they were insignificant. But it plunged Africa into anarchy for centuries; it laid open the way to the invasion o£ the Vandals, and was extinguished only with Christianity itself.

Timgad was the very focus of Donatist agitation. Its bishops took a leading part; of one of them Augustine says that for ten years Africa trembled beneath his yoke. To this century perhaps belong the ruins of several Christian churches unearthed in the city. The schism was not bounded by the arguments of doctors. It extended to the pillage of estates and the sack of cities. The wild tribes of the Aurès and other mountain districts which had never completely owned the sovereignty of Rome made common cause with the schismatics. And Roman Africa was ruined. Then came the Vandals.

The historian Gibbon, who rises to his highest flights in the consideration of Christianity and its heresies, has sketched the Donatist pretensions in immortal words: “Excluded from the civil and religious communion of mankind, they boldly excommunicated the rest of mankind. They asserted with confidence, and almost with exultation, that the apostolical succession was interrupted; that _all_ the bishops of Europe and Asia were infected by the contagion of guilt and schism; and that the prerogatives of the catholic church were confined to the chosen portion of the African believers, who alone had preserved inviolate the integrity of their faith and discipline. This rigid theory was supported by the most uncharitable conduct. Whenever they acquired a proselyte, even from the distant provinces of the East, they carefully repeated the sacred rites of baptism and ordination; as they rejected the validity of those which he had already received from the hands of heretics and schismatics. Bishops, virgins, and even spotless infants, were subjected to the disgrace of a public penance before they could be admitted to the communion of the Donatists. If they obtained possession of a church which had been used by their catholic adversaries, they purified the unhallowed building with the same jealous care which a temple of idols might have required. They washed the pavement, scraped the walls, burnt the altar, which was commonly of wood, melted the consecrated plate, and cast the holy eucharist to the dogs, with every circumstance of ignominy which could provoke and perpetuate the animosity of religious factions.” Such an account would almost describe proceedings of religious fanatics at a date much nearer our own age. But the fervour to which the Donatist schism gave birth produced under the African sun remarkable developments. “The rage of the Donatists was inflamed by a frenzy of a very extraordinary kind; and which, if it really prevailed amongst them in so extravagant a degree, cannot surely be paralleled in any country or in any age. Many of these fanatics were possessed with the horror of life and the desire of martyrdom; and they deemed it of little moment by what means, or by what hands they perished, if their conduct was sanctified by the intention of devoting themselves to the glory of the true faith, and the hope of eternal happiness.” They would disturb worshippers, waylay travellers, or insult courts of justice, in the hope of achieving martyrdom. Failing other resources, they would cast themselves headlong from some lofty rock. “In the actions of these desperate enthusiasts, who were admired by one party as the martyrs of God, and abhorred by the other as the victims of Satan, an impartial philosopher may discover the influence, and the last abuse, of that inflexible spirit which was originally derived from the character and principles of the Jewish nation.”

Genseric, King of the Vandals, landed in Africa from Spain in A.D. 429. Born a Catholic, he embraced the Arian heresy, and made common cause with the African Donatists. He swept through Barbary, an easy conqueror. His fleets ravaged the coasts of Italy and Sicily. In A.D. 455 he sacked Rome. For a hundred years the rough Northmen held the fertile provinces. They rased the fortifications, but did not overthrow the Roman cities; they rather succumbed to their luxury. They did not destroy, but they constructed nothing. They had no thought of substituting their own institutions for those of the conquered races. They considered themselves merely a garrison, for which the country must provide subsistence. Their decadence commenced with the death of their leader.

In the early part of the sixth century Byzantium set himself to take up the mantle which Rome had let fall. The great Justinian determined to make good his claim to all the former possessions of the Empire. The Vandals were in no condition to offer a vigorous resistance. The native population was everywhere in revolt. The tribes of the Aurès descended from their mountains and sacked the fair cities which had been raised under the protection of the Third Legion—Tebessa, Bagai, Lambessa, and Timgad. Belisarius, the Byzantine general, landed in Tripoli in A.D. 533, and, marching rapidly westward, met with little resistance. In a few years a great part of the corn-growing districts was brought under effective control. All the ports were held by Byzantine garrisons. Barbary was to experience an Indian summer.

The first care of the Greeks was to build a series of fortresses to hold in check the tribes of mountain and desert which for generations had been acquiring greater boldness in war and pillage. Remains of such forts are all over the country. There is one at Timgad, situate about 150 yards from the Southern Baths. It is a great quadrilateral flanked with square towers, and covering more than 7000 square yards. It is extraordinarily solid in construction, the walls being nine feet thick. But it is at Tebessa that the most perfect example of Byzantine fortification exists. The enceinte encloses the Arab town, and to put it into a state of defence the French have only had to execute a few repairs. For these hastily constructed fortresses any materials which came to hand were used. Into the solid walls faced with square blocks were thrown the debris of private houses, the friezes of temples, the statues of the gods. What the Vandal had spared, the Berber and the Byzantine between them made an end of.

Under the shelter of these fortified places a neo-Roman civilization budded again. The great proprietors and the wealthy financiers of the later Empire had disappeared. Their place was taken by the Church. The bishops occupied themselves with business of every description, political, financial, administrative, and even military. Vast sums were spent in the construction of great basilicas and monasteries, the ruins of which may be seen at Timgad and Tebessa to-day. To this period doubtless belongs the huge building, basilica and monastery, to the west of Timgad. It covers a space of not less than 20,000 square yards. The basilica is 200 feet long and 70 feet wide, and is preceded by a court-yard of the same size as itself. It is built chiefly of stones taken from the neighbouring pagan temples, which must have been already in ruin at the time of its erection. If, as some suppose, these great churches were built originally during the fourth and fifth centuries, before the Vandal invasion, there can be little doubt that they were rebuilt with modifications and enlargements during the Byzantine period.

The domination of the Church did not make for the prosperity or security of the people. The great dreams of Justinian were never realized; his enterprise from the very beginning had in it the seeds of decay. The rapacity of the ecclesiastics at least equalled that of the former Treasury officials; the husbandmen were plunged in a condition of abject poverty; the persecution of schismatics decimated the population. Native insurrections, mutinies of troops, sullen detestation of the people prepared the way for the easy fall of the Byzantine administration before the invading Arabs of the next century.

It is natural to compare Timgad with Pompeii, and the comparison has often been made. But beyond the fact that both were towns of the Roman Empire, and that the ruins of both have been preserved to an extent unparalleled elsewhere, they have no great resemblance. It happened to me, as probably it has happened to few, two or three weeks after leaving Timgad, while the memory of it was fresh, to stand once again in the Forum of Pompeii. I recalled their different conditions. They were not contemporary; Pompeii was destroyed before Timgad was built; Pompeii, rather Greek than Roman in origin, was a pleasure town of the first century, which, after damage by an earthquake at the zenith of its prosperity, was overwhelmed by ashes from Vesuvius; Timgad was a military and commercial town of the second and third centuries, ruined first by religious faction and financial breakdown, and finally overthrown of set purpose by a horde of mountaineers. To compare them is like comparing the Tunbridge Wells of the eighteenth century with the Pretoria of the twentieth. The contrasts their ruins present are those we should expect. Timgad is more solid and more serious; its public buildings are finer; its main streets are more important; and there is nothing at Pompeii to compare with the magnificent arch of Trajan. But Pompeii is richer in minor matters, in all the illuminating incidents of private life; its chief interest lies in its wonderful houses, and in the almost miraculous preservation of much of their interior decoration. And their situations accord with their peculiarities. Timgad lies on a bare hill-side, far from the habitations of man; Pompeii hard by the lovely bay of Sorrento, in one of the fairest landscapes of Italy. The cities are not rivals; they supplement each other; and those of us to whom a study of what was before is one of the chief interests of life may be grateful that we have so much of both.

_XII—THE ROAD THROUGH KHABYLIA_

Setif—The Chabet pass—A fishless river—A lovely coast—Bougie—Khabylia—
Greek types—Fort National.

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“A rough laborious people, there,
Not only give the dreadful Alps to smile,
And press their culture on retiring snows,
But, to firm order trained and patient war,
They likewise know, beyond the nerve remiss
Of mercenary force, how to defend
The tasteful little their hard toil has earned.”
THOMSON.

He who returns by motor-car from Biskra to Algiers may avoid the detour via Constantine by taking the new direct road from Batna to Sétif, a distance of 132 kilometres. It ascends to an altitude of over 5000 feet, and in winter is sometimes blocked by snow. But this is not likely to be a frequent trouble. Whichever way he comes, direct or roundabout, by road or rail, the traveller must make Sétif his point. If he omits to take the road from Sétif to Bougie, through the Chabet pass, a distance of 113 kilometres, he will have no idea of what Algeria is capable of in the way of mountain scenery.

There is a distinct tendency among Englishmen to-day to revolt against the domination of the guide-book. With our ancient constitution in the melting-pot, and our most cherished national convictions openly contested, it is hardly surprising that even the revered name of Murray has failed to maintain its authority. There are abandoned men who openly flout it, who want to see nothing of the things that ought to be seen, to know none of the things that ought to be known. The reaction was inevitable. Murray and Baedeker and the like set poor human weakness an impossible ideal. They direct us as if we were an army of invasion; they map out our operations day by day and hour by hour with a ruthless precision. Has anyone ever carried through the programme of How to spend ten days in Rome, and survived to boast of it?

Wherefore in our iconoclastic age there are men to whom the guide-book’s double star is but a danger signal. Let me implore them to waive their prejudices as far at least as the Chabet pass is concerned. If much be-praised it is still quite un-hackneyed; and it is magnificent. And they may steal a march on the enemy. The guide-books, as far as Algeria is concerned, have not discovered the motor-car. They direct you to hire a carriage at Sétif, to sleep at a roadside inn, and to lumber into Bougie at the close of the second day. We have changed all that. We take a car at Sétif after _dejeuner_, and loitering by the way we yet reach Bougie in time to stroll round the town before dinner. So we have a day in hand. But let us haste to do it before a revised edition comes out.

The plateau of which Sétif may be considered the centre lies at a high altitude, and as the sea is no great distance off, we may perceive from a glance at the map that there must be a more or less rapid landfall towards it. Such conditions commonly produce a picturesque coast-line. Here we have more than this. The plain is supported by a very abrupt range of mountains rising to twice its height,—the peaks to 6000 and 7000 feet. Such a range must either be crossed by a high pass, or it may be that we may find an outlet where a mountain stream, taking advantage perhaps of a rift caused by a natural convulsion, has worn for itself a passage. Such a passage is the gorge of Chabet-el-Akhira.

From Sétif, most hideous of modern French towns, the road leads northward for some distance through an uninteresting corn-growing country. After a few miles the surface becomes more broken, Khabyle villages begin to appear on neighbouring hill-tops, and Khabyle gardens are rich in apricot blossom. We cross a chain of hills running east and west, from the summit of which we obtain a splendid view of the mountain range which we are about to penetrate. We descend rapidly to the stream which is to be our companion, and at a distance of fifty-three kilometres from Sétif reach Kherrata, at the mouth of the pass. Here is the half-way house where the carriage-folk of former days were wont to pass the night. It lies in a cool upland valley at the foot of bare stony hills which might be in Wales or Cumberland. It is market-day in the village, and the street is crowded with Khabyles,—as ragged and dirty a crowd as you may see in county Galway. Their Arab dress looks curiously incongruous with such very northern surroundings.

Immediately beyond Kherrata the road enters the gorge with a dramatic suddenness. It descends rapidly by the side of the stream which here becomes a torrent. The valley contracts and soon grows so narrow that the road has to be bored, as it were, through overhanging cliffs, or borne on arches above the river. There are many kinds of gorges; the least interesting perhaps are those which run directly between unbroken cliffs. This is of the finest kind. Its turns are rapid. It has numerous lateral valleys which break its almost perpendicular sides into seeming pinnacles of rock. One looks almost directly upwards to peaks five and six thousand feet high. Even where the road is carried several hundred feet above the river you may toss a stone and strike the opposite cliff. It is said that before the French road-makers came not even an Arab could pass the gorge on foot. Great caves appear on the mountain sides, the haunt of innumerable pigeons; monkeys are generally to be seen, but on market-days the exceptional traffic scares them to seclusion. Here and there waterfalls descend from the tributary gorges, and rapidly swell the turbid stream.

Even the all-pervading Roman seems to have found this gorge too much for him. Yet it is not easy to discover an _endroit_ which has not echoed to the tramp of the legions. Mr. Belloc[12] tells a delightful story of a French general who, filled with pride at having conducted his troops through an almost impossible defile, sent a party to inscribe a record of the achievement on the face of a cliff. The men came back to say that there appeared to be lettering on the cliff already. On examination this proved to be “Legio III Augusta.”

Footnote 12:

“Esto Perpetus.” London, 1906.

The actual gorge is about four miles long. The valley then gradually widens, the hills become rather less abrupt, their sides are clothed with ample vegetation, chiefly forests of cork and oak trees, and the lateral valleys grow larger, in due proportion to the general scheme. We pass from the thrilling sensations of the unique defile into a mountain valley of great beauty, but less unusual in character.

It happened that I offered a seat in my car to a gentleman whose party were inconveniently crowded in their own. I began by doing the unpardonable thing; deceived by certain guttural syllables, I said, “Are you a German?” He replied: “No! thank God, I am Dutch.” And my heart was glad within me, for the Dutchman is our brother, and our friend; perhaps because we have fought him over and over again, and sometimes we have beaten him, and sometimes he us. We have had, as far as I am aware, no such pleasant relations with the German; perhaps if we had fought him for a century or two we should appreciate his good qualities. In spite of this inauspicious beginning, I soon found points in common with my chance companion. We both knew many lands; especially we both knew the same places and the same men in Norway. My Dutchman loved Norway as I love it, and knew it better. Our points of view were different. His to range far and wide, to sip as a bee winging from flower to flower the varied beauties of fjord and fell, of fond and brae; mine to mark the rise and fall of one much-studied river, chained as a galley-slave to my angle.

So we played the pretty and seductive game of resemblances. Here in this fierce African landscape we contrived to see Bratlandsdal, here Sundal, here the smoothened rock-faces of Naerodalsosen. Lower down where a vast amphitheatre of hills guarded the meeting of two waters we saw the Pyrenees. But the while I was hugging to myself a secret study of which my comrade recked nothing. Even as a man may travel by train, and mark a country, and consider within himself how he would ride over it to hounds;—so was I noting the pools and streams of the river, muddy as a glacier-fed river may be in a hot July, and judging where the fish would be like to lie, and how I should put the fly to them. A very pretty pastime, but clouded by the knowledge that no fish that is a fish, not even a wee trout, may live in these waters. They contain calcareous salts, or something unpleasant, which no fish of the royal race will stand. There are hopes of acclimatizing tench; but who can wax warm at the prospect? Yet was this to look upon a real river, the finest river (with all respect to the Nile and the Zambesi; I speak as an angler) that I have seen in Africa; a fair succession of pool and stream,—of pools running swiftly beneath steep banks and shelving shores, of streams just steep enough to make the pools holding. The pity of it! From end to end Africa has an air of being unfinished and ill-designed; there is always something wanting to its completeness; in some ways it is too big, in others too small; it lacks water, or it has too much; and things are seldom what they seem,—when you descry a distant lake it is generally the mirage; wherefore a salmon river without salmon falls quite within the natural order of African things.

So on through the broadening valley, with glimpses of azure sea ahead, and soaring mountains, clad with primeval forest, all around. The road, well engineered,—that goes without saying,—is much cut up by the heavy traffic to and from certain mining enterprises in the hills. One iron-ore mine,—the property of an English company, I hear with national pride,—on the opposite side of the valley has a little railway and a little port of its own; and two vessels, hovering suspiciously in the offing, are not corsairs, but intent on a lawful freight. But here, as everywhere, the authorities are busy in making the road smooth for the motor-car, and the repairers and a steam-roller are at work. The car is not yet a familiar object to man and beast. A mule bearing a native bolts at our approach, and unseats its rider. We call to the chauffeur to stop. He replies, “Mais, ce n’est qu’un Khabyle”; in which I recognize a common colonial note. We look round to see the mule caught and the rider up again, and go on happily.

The long descent comes to an end at length, and at a point about twenty-three miles short of Bougie we reach the sea. The coast-lands here consist of a series of semicircular plains, divided by great spurs which run northward from the main range, and form capes. Across these flat and highly cultivated plains our road lies where it may with Algerian directness, but rises to dizzy heights by zigzags to surmount the precipitous headlands which once or twice bar its progress. The contour of this variable and rocky coast is eminently picturesque, the views of sea and mountain of infinite variety. And afar the dazzling whiteness of Bougie stretching upwards from its harbour among the olive groves invites us. The level lands appear to be of great fertility; amid great fields of corn and vine pleasant and prosperous-looking country houses stand, girt about with fruit trees,—figs, apricots and peaches. In some places the cultivation is carried almost to high-water mark, in others a sward of fine turf seems to meet the sand.