and untamed population.
The commands which Augustus issued from the capital of his Spanish province especially regarded Mauretania. But we must call to mind what had taken place in Africa since the dictator Caesar ordered it anew. He had increased the Roman province by the addition of the kingdom of Numidia, and the river Ampsaga was fixed as the western boundary between New Africa, as Numidia was sometimes called, and Mauretania. This latter country was at that time under two kings. Over the eastern realm of Iol, soon to be called by Caesar’s name, ruled King Bocchus; over the western realm of Tingis ruled King Bogud. Both these potentates had taken Caesar’s side in the first civil war, unlike King Juba; and they therefore kept their kingdoms after Caesar’s victory. But in the next civil war, they did not both take the same side. Bocchus held to Caesar the son, as he had held to Caesar the father; but Bogud supported Antonius, while his own capital Tingis (Tangier) embraced the other cause. In reward, Bocchus was promoted to kingship over the whole of Mauretania; and Tingis received the privilege of Roman citizenship. When Bocchus died (33 B.C.), his kingdom was left kingless for a season, but the Roman government did not think that the time had yet come for a province of Mauretania.
A son of the last king of Numidia, named Juba, like his father, had followed the dictator’s triumph through the streets of Rome, and had been brought up under the care of Caesar and his successor. He served in the Roman army; he was an eager student of Greek and Roman literature, and wrote or compiled Greek books himself. On him Augustus fixed to take the place of king Bocchus. If it was out or the question to restore him to his paternal kingdom of Numidia, he should at least have the next thing to it, the kingdom of Mauretania; and as the descendant of king Massinissa, he would be welcome to the natives. At the same time (25 B.C.) Augustus gave Mauretania a queen. The daughter of Antonius and the Egyptian queen had followed his own triumph, as Juba had followed his father’s. Named Cleopatra like her mother, she had been protected and educated by the noble kindness of Octavia, whom her parents had so deeply wronged. There had been a peculiar fitness, as has been well remarked, in the union of the Numidian prince and the Egyptian princess, whose fortunes were so like. This union brought about the strange circumstance that the last king of Mauretania, Juba’s son, bore the name of Ptolemy.
Thus Roman dominion in Africa, west of Egypt, consisted under Augustus of a province and a dependent kingdom, the river Ampsaga, on which Cirta is built, forming the boundary. The southern boundaries of this dominion it would have been hard, perhaps, for Augustus himself to fix, inasmuch as there were no neighboring states. The real dominion passed insensibly into a “sphere of influence” among the native races, who were alternatively submissive and hostile, or, as the Romans would have said, rebellious.
Against these dangerous neighbors of the interior, Garamantes and invincible Gaetulians, Transtagnenses and Musulami, it was necessary to keep a legion in Africa, which was thus distinguished as the only senatorial province whose proconsul commanded an army. Two expeditions were made in the reign of Augustus against these enemies, the first under the proconsul L. Cornelius Balbus (19 B.C.), against the Garamantes, and a second under P. Sulpicius Quirinius, against the tribes of Marmarica further east. Balbus performed his task ably, and received a triumph, remarkable as the last granted to any private Roman citizen.
In the organization of Gaul and Spain, Rome had no older civilization to build upon. It was otherwise in Sicily and Africa. The civilization of Sicily, when it became Roman, was chiefly Greek, but partly Phoenician; that of Africa, on the contrary, was chiefly Phoenician, but partly Greek. Accordingly Rome built on Phoenician foundations in the lands which she won from Carthage, and accepted the constitution of the Phoenician town communities, just as she accepted the cantons in Gaul. But there was a remarkable likeness in organization between these communities and those of Italy, so that the transition from the one form to the other was soon and easily accomplished. Carthage, whose existence was blotted out by the short-sighted policy of the republican senate, had been revived by the generous counsels of Caesar, to become soon the capital of Roman, as it had been of Punic, Africa. At first the Phoenician constitution was restored to her, but she soon received the form of a Roman colonia, and grew to be one of the greatest and most luxurious cities of western Europe. Utica, jealous of the resurrection of her old rival, was made a Roman municipium. The growth of Roman life in Africa was also furthered by the settlement of colonies of veterans. In the original province may be mentioned Clupea, and Hippo Diarrhytos; in Numidia, Cirta (Constantine) and Sicca. In Roman civilization, Mauritania vas far behind her eastern neighbors; but Augustus did much in establishing colonies, chiefly on the coast. These Roman towns of Mauretania owed no allegiance to the native king, but depended directly on the governor of the neighboring province.
Besides the Phoenician towns, and the towns on Italian model, whether municipia or colonies, there were also native Libyan communities; but these stood directly under the control of the Roman governors, or sometimes were placed under special Roman prefects. The language of the native Berbers was still spoken chiefly in the regions which the Romans least frequented; it was treated by the conquerors like the Iberian in Spain and the Celtic in Gaul. The language of communication throughout northern Africa was Phoenician; but Rome refused to recognize this Asiatic tongue as an official language, as she had recognized Greek in her eastern provinces. In their local affairs the communities might use Phoenician; but once they entered into imperial relations, Latin was prescribed. It might have been thought that Greek, which was better known in Africa than Latin when the Romans came, would have been adopted there as the imperial language; but the government decreed that Africa, like Sicily, was to belong to the Latin West. It is instructive to observe that, while the name of the Greek queen of Mauretania appears on coins in Greek, that of her husband, who was regarded as an imperial official, is always in Latin.
Africa was fertile in fruit, though her wine could not compete with the produce of Spain and Italy. In corn she was especially rich and shared with Egypt and Sicily the privilege of supplying Rome. The purple industry was still active, chiefly in the little island of Gerba, not destined, indeed, to become as famous as the island of Tyre. Juba introduced this industry on the western coast of his kingdom. The general wellbeing of the land has ample witnesses in the remains of splendid structures which have been found there, in all parts, such as theatres, baths and triumphal arches.
From Africa we pass to another province in which Rome was the heiress of Carthage. Sardinia had ceased to look to her African ruler in 238 B.C., and had become, seven years later, a Roman province, the earliest except Sicily. In the division of the provinces in 27 B.C., Sardinia and Corsica fell to the senate and Roman people; but the descents of pirates forced Augustus to take the province into his own hands in 6 A.D., and commit it to the protection of soldiers. He did not place it, however, under a legatus of senatorial rank, but only under a, procurator of equestrian rank. It was destined to pass again to the senate under Nero, but returned to the Emperor finally in the reign of Vespasian. These islands, though placed in the midst of civilization, were always barbarous and remote. The rugged nature of Corsica, the pestilential air of its southern fellow, did not invite settlements or visitors; they were more suited to be places of exile, and they were used as such. Augustus sent no colonies thither, and did not visit them himself. The chief value of Sardinia lay in its large production and export of grain.
Very different was the other great island of the Mediterranean, the oldest of all the provinces of Rome, the land whose conquest led to the further conquests of Sardinia and of Africa herself. It was in Sicily that the younger Caesar established his position in the west; his recovery of the land, on which Rome depended for her grain, first set his influence and popularity on a sure foundation. As Augustus, he visited it again (B.C. 22), and, although it was a senatorial province, ordered its affairs, by virtue of his mains imperium, at Syracuse; perhaps it was in memory of this visit that he gave the name of Syracuse to a room in his house which he used as a retreat when he wished to suffer no interruption. Roman policy had decreed that Sicily was to belong to the Latin West, not to the Greek East, with which once she had been so constantly connected; and for centuries to come, embosomed in the centre of the Empire, she plays no part in history, such as she had played in the past and was destined to play again in the distant future.
SECT. V. — RAETIA, NORICUM AND THE ALPINE DISTRICTS
From the province adjoining Italy