Roman Africa

The province built on the ruins of Carthage, which Rome then rebuilt as one of its own great cities. Africa Proconsularis was created in 146 BC after the destruction of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War, covering what is now northern Tunisia and later much of coastal Algeria and Libya. Carthage was refounded as a Roman colony by Augustus and became the second city of the Latin west, after Rome itself. The province's value was grain: African harvests fed Rome for much of the year, and the annona shipments were as vital as Egypt's. Olive cultivation was extended far inland on land irrigated by dams and cisterns, and the mosaics from African villas are the largest surviving body of Roman floor art. The province was governed by a proconsul with a single legion, unusual for a senatorial province. It produced the playwright Terence, brought to Rome as a slave, the novelist Apuleius, and the emperor Septimius Severus, whose home town Leptis Magna he rebuilt on a lavish scale. African Christianity was distinctive and combative: Tertullian, Cyprian and Augustine of Hippo all wrote here, and the Donatist schism divided the province for a century. The Vandals took it in 439 and used it as a naval base. Byzantium recovered it in 533. Arab conquest from 647 ended Latin Africa permanently. Carthage may have held 300 thousand people under Roman rule. El Djem in Tunisia has one of the largest surviving Roman amphitheatres. The province supplied wild animals for arena shows across the empire. Latin remained the language of its cities until the Arab conquest.

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