Chapter XIII: The African Provinces (2)

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

[Sidenote: And in Mauretania.]

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

[Sidenote: Large landed estates.]

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

[Sidenote: Organisation of the Berber communities.]

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

[Sidenote: Husbandry.]

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

[Sidenote: Oil and wine.]

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

[Sidenote: Manufactures and commerce.]

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

[Sidenote: Prosperity.]

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

[Sidenote: Roads.]

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

[Sidenote: Introduction of camels.]

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

[Sidenote: Character and culture of the people.]

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

[Sidenote: Scholasticism.]

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

[Sidenote: Christian literature in Africa.]

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