The Roman frontier—Lambessa—The Empire ruined by bad finance—African Emperors—The plan of Timgad—Buildings, inscriptions, and mosaics—Prosperity of Roman Africa—Local patriotism—The Roman tradition. “As in those realms where CÆsars once bore sway, Defaced by time and tottering to decay, There in the ruin heedless of the dead, The shelter-seeking peasant builds his shed.” Goldsmith. East and west of Batna lay the Roman frontier line during the first two centuries of the Empire. It was marked by a series of cities, partly military, partly commercial; extensive ruins bespeak their ancient importance. As elsewhere in Europe and North Africa the fall of the Empire seldom meant the abandonment of the city sites; they continued to be occupied by successive generations of men, even though, like Rome herself, for a period they sank to insignificance. And their ruined buildings, public and We owe the existence of Pompeii and Herculaneum to the accident of their overwhelming by ashes and lava from Vesuvius. The former has been laid bare; the excavation of the latter, a much more serious matter, awaits the day when the disposers of wealth, public or private, shall see fit to undertake a work, which promises the greatest results. It happens by a piece of exceptional good fortune that here, on the southern edge of Barbary, Pompeii has a serious rival. The Roman city of Thamagudi, now called Timgad, has since its destruction at the time of the Arab invasion of A.D. 692 never been the habitation of man. To this cause A STREET AT TIMGAD The night of centuries is past; the long silence is broken; the jackals have fled to their mountains; and a Latin race is tenderly safeguarding its heritage. Once again a road leads to the portals of the ancient city, and with infinite skill and care the debris has been cleared away. Columns have been re-erected, masonry replaced in its original position and fragments of inscriptions pieced together; a very triumph of that vast capacity for taking pains which is such an important element of French genius. One charm of the place to the visitor is that it is not exploited as a tourist resort. A little museum has been set up to hold the treasures found among the ruins, a modest hotel has been The Roman conquest and civilization—or rather assimilation—of North Africa were slow, tentative and reluctant. Scipio Æmilianus burnt Carthage in 146 B.C.; it was more than a hundred years later that Julius CÆsar handed over Cirta to the soldiers of Sittius. Under Augustus a camp was established at Theveste (Tebessa), and the Third Legion, Augusta, was stationed there with the object of protecting the territory of Cirta, and the proconsular province which is now Tunisia. Under the shelter of this post, during the first century of our era, the great corn lands enclosed by the AurÈs mountains were gradually brought under Roman control. The building of Thamagudi in the reign of Trajan, in the year A.D. 100, is evidence of the importance to 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 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 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. 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 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. 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 At last you come to Timgad, and you see at 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 TIMGAD: ARCH OF TRAJAN 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 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
“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 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 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, 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 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 11. Graham, “Roman Africa,” p. 304. |