Numidia

A Berber kingdom that Rome used, discarded and finally absorbed, and whose cavalry decided at least one war. Numidia lay west of Carthage across modern Algeria, divided between the Massylii and the Masaesyli, and its horsemen - riding without bridles and famous for feigned retreats - were the most valued light cavalry in the western Mediterranean. Both sides in the Second Punic War recruited them, and the decision that mattered was Masinissa's: he switched from Carthage to Rome, and his cavalry turned the flank at Zama in 202 BCE, ending Hannibal's war. Rome rewarded him with a unified kingdom and, more usefully, with permission to raid Carthaginian territory that Carthage could not answer without breaking its treaty - the trap that produced the Third Punic War. Masinissa reigned some fifty years, settling nomads as farmers and making Cirta a real capital. His grandson's succession fell apart into the war with Jugurtha, who bribed Roman senators openly enough that Sallust made the episode a study in republican corruption, and who was finally betrayed and starved to death in Rome in 104 BCE. The kingdom was partitioned, restored, and annexed under Augustus and again in 46 BCE after backing Pompey. Its wheat fed Rome. Augustine of Hippo was a Numidian. Cirta, now Constantine, was the capital. The Medracen and the tomb at Thugga are surviving royal monuments. Numidian horsemen appear repeatedly on Roman coins and reliefs. The Libyco-Berber script used in its inscriptions is ancestral to Tifinagh, still written by Tuareg today.

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