If pressed for time we may take the evening train from Constantine to Batna, visit Lambèse and Timgad next day, and go on to Biskra in the afternoon by train. Those who reach Batna from Biskra or El-Kantara about noon may take lunch at the station, go on to Lambèse, staying there for 1½–2 hrs., and thence to Timgad, whence they may return next morning to Batna in time for the afternoon train to Constantine.
Batna, see p. [275]. The road leaves the town by the Quartier Militaire and ascends slightly, to the S.E., through the dreary upland plain, where it is sometimes bitterly cold in winter, and along the N. margin of the Aurès Mts. (p. [278]). As we near the hill-region of Lambèse we sight the ‘Prætorium’ in the distance.
7 M. Lambèse or Lambessa (3875 ft.; quarters at the poor cafés only), a village with a large Pénitencier, or Maison Centrale de Correction, was founded in 1848 as a prison for political offenders and partly built out of the ruins of the Roman Lambaesis.
Lambæsis was the headquarters of the famous Third Legion, the nucleus of the Roman forces in Numidia, transferred hither about 100 A. D. from Tebessa (p. [315]) for the defence of the chief Aurès passes, those to the Oued Abdi and the Oued el-Abiod (p. [278]). Their oldest camp, recently discovered, lay 1¼ M. to the W. of Lambèse; the newer camp, mentioned as early as 146 A. D., is now partly built over by the penitentiary and its garden. On a hill rising steeply from the plain, 1¼ M. to the S. of the later camp, lay a civilian settlement (canăbae), occupied at first by traders, artisans, and the soldiers’ families, but erected into a municipium under Marcus Aurelius (161–180). This became the seat of the governor of Numidia and for a short time prospered. But the punishment of the Third Legion by Gordian III. (238), who removed it to the Rhine for twenty-five years, the earthquake of 268, the extension of the military frontier under Diocletian (284–305) to the S. border of the Sahara Atlas, and the transference, under Constantine the Great, of the governor’s seat to Cirta (p. [298]) were disasters from which Lambæsis never recovered, so that by the 5th cent. it was completely abandoned.
The Roman *Camp, one of the best-preserved in existence, ‘the classic ruin of military occupation’ as it has been called, forms a rectangle of 547 by 460 yds., with the usual rounded corners, and four gates, between which ran the two main streets, the Cardo and the Decumanus.
We alight at the ancient Porta Sinistra, the W. gate. Between this and the ‘Prætorium’ (see below) recent excavations have unearthed remains of the Decumanus and its three N. side-streets, all once flanked with colonnades, and the foundations of the barracks built of concrete (p. [290]). The Porta Praetoria, the N. gate, at the end of the well-paved Cardo, with its two passages and the substructures of its two towers, is particularly well preserved. Near it, adjoining the relics of the camp-wall, are the ruins of several other towers.
At the intersection of the Decumanus and the Cardo, 156 yds. from the N. gate, rises the so-called **Praetorium, probably rebuilt in 268, the monumental entrance-gateway of the residence of the legate (prætorium or principia), the only intact Roman building of the kind and the grandest Roman ruin in Algeria. This great rectangular pile of solid masonry in two stories, 33½ by 25 yds. in area and 49 ft. in height, is adorned outside with Corinthian columns on high pedestals and with Corinthian pilasters. The four great round-arched passages, of which the side and end ones are flanked, respectively, by three and two smaller archways, open into a central space, which, to judge from the four large bases of pillars, was once probably furnished with a roof and lighted by the four round-arched windows in the upper story.
Of the so-called Forum, the chief court of the Prætorium, there still exist remains of the colonnade and a number of side-chambers, once armouries. (In the so-called arsenal at the N.W. angle many cannon-balls and other missiles have been found.) To the S. of the forum is the Posticum, with its offices and Scholae, the club-rooms of the officers and sergeants (now ticketed), and the Chapel for the flags and insignia of the Legion, recognizable by its large niche. The cellars served as the Treasury.
The Thermes du Camp, the ancient baths, to the S.E. of the Prætorium, show remains of the heating apparatus (comp. p. [294]).
From the E. gate, once the Porta Dextra, ran the road to Verecunda (p. [289]) and Timgad and the Via Septimiana to the town-hill, 1¼ M. distant. In the open ground outside of it rises the ruinous single Arch of Commodus. Near this is the Amphitheatre, whose stones were used in building the penitentiary (p. [286]).