One village of importance, and one only, breaks the monotony of the route, and the motor passes through its narrow streets, which it almost fits, hooting and scattering the people right and left, shaking them out of their dreamy ways with its message of speed and progress. Yet though some grumble more admire.
Even on this frequented road, where the motor passes twice daily, the same amusing precautions are taken by the Arabs as at Hammam Meskoutine. The camels are ridden off into the plains, carts are dragged to the side of the road, and the horses’ heads covered up—even the donkeys are held very tight. And if any man is too sleepy to attend to them, his animals give him enough to do to pacify them after the horror has passed.
After this village the olives disappear. Nothing is visible but a wide plain, literally carpeted with wild flowers, mostly common ones, but exquisite from pure abundance of colour. Amongst them are masses of small purple gladiolus, the most beautiful flower of them all.
For miles ahead the road stretches out straight as a gigantic ruler, diminishing in perfect perspective to a vanishing point on the horizon, the effect enhanced by the slight undulations of the plain. The road is without shade or trees, there are not even villages to be seen, only a few Bedawin camps, and an occasional house surrounded by fragrant mimosa and olive trees, the dwellings of the French road-surveyor. Innumerable traces of the Roman occupation are to be found on every side, ruined farms, old walls, and fragments of buildings, showing that this must have been almost as densely populated as the district between Hadrumetum (Sousse) and Carthage, which, as a Roman historian tells us, was shaded for the whole length of the road by villas and beautiful gardens.
At last, dimly discernible in the distance, a vast form rises, desolate and alone upon the earth, a forlorn relic of Roman splendour, the African rival of the Colosseum at Rome—the amphitheatre of El Djem. It is only a few feet smaller than its great original, is built on the same lines, is of the same massive breadth, and what it loses in actual measurement is regained by its isolated position. A building of such proportions is sufficiently impressive in the heart of a famous city, but out here in the wilderness the effect is overwhelming. The very existence of such a huge place of amusement so far from the present haunts of men, on a spot so bereft of all visible means of supporting a city large enough to send 60,000 spectators to witness the games, is strange, almost unthinkable. The land, of course, is good, but water is not here in any abundance, and there is no stone in the neighbourhood—the fine white limestone used in the building having all been brought from Sallecta on the coast.
Nothing now remains but this, the wonder of North Africa, of the whole city of Thyrsus mentioned by Pliny and Ptolemy, except a half-buried Corinthian capital of colossal size, a road, fragments of a villa, some baths and a few mosaics, all more or less hidden and much scattered among the olives.
The Proconsul Gordian rebelled against Maximin, and was proclaimed Emperor at the age of eighty, at Thyrsus in A.D. 238, about the time of the building of the amphitheatre, which is sometimes supposed to have been his work as Emperor. But this could hardly be, as he was defeated in battle, and died by his own hand within two months.
The amphitheatre was looked upon by the Arabs as a place of refuge in troublous times, and was often used as a fortress. It is called Kasr el Kahina, or Palace of the Sorceress, after the celebrated El Kahina, of whom many legends are told. When she was besieged in this singular castle of hers, she caused subterranean passages to be made to the sea coast at Sallecta, and had this done on so large a scale that several horsemen could ride through them abreast. The Arabs believe firmly in these marvellous passages, but the entrance to them has not yet been found. However, later on, another siege had to be raised, because the defenders were so well supplied that they mockingly threw down fresh fish to the besiegers, who were already suffering from want of food.
THE ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE, EL DJEM