The Provinces of the Roman Empire 48

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 48

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.