Travels in the footsteps of Bruce in Algeria and Tunis

by Sir R. Lambert Playfair

HENRY S. KING C^o. LONDON.

Here are the extensive ruins of the ancient Thignica. Bruce is absolutely silent regarding his visit to this place; nevertheless he has left five sheets of drawings illustrative of it:—

1. Perspective pencil sketch of temple; too faint for reproduction.

2. Very rough pencil sketch, with dimensions, of plan of temple, details of base of order, echinus and fillet, and of a remarkably fine soffit. On the back are careful sketches, in Indian ink and pencil, of other details of the same building.

3. Careful sketches in Indian ink of details of cornice and soffit. On the back is a drawing in pencil of capital of order.

4. Careful sketches in Indian ink of details of architecture.

5. Slight perspective sketch in Indian ink of other ruins at Ain Tunga, including the theatre and arch, but not the Byzantine fortress. ([Plate XXVI.])

The last-mentioned is now the most conspicuous ruin in the place. Bruce has left no sketch of it; indeed, throughout all his wanderings he paid no attention whatever to buildings of this period, which, though by no means uninteresting from an historical point of view, are absolutely devoid of any architectural merit.

The exterior walls are in a very perfect condition, as are also the towers at each angle, but the interior is so choked up with a rank growth of weeds and scrub, that to examine it is almost an impossibility. Numerous inscriptions are still to be seen here, which have been given by Guérin; the most important one, in six fragments, records the full name of the place, ‘Municipium Septimium Aurelium Antoninianum . . . . Herculeum Frugiferum Thignica,’ and commemorates the reconstruction of its market-place in the time of Alexander Severus and of his mother Julia Mamæa, A.D. 222-235.[219]

The Corinthian temple must have been almost as fine as that of Dougga; the portico is now entirely destroyed, and all that remains are the angles of the cella. The masonry was of an unusually fine quality, and the columns were magnificent monoliths. In Bruce’s time the portico was still entire, with the exception of one angle of the pediment. It was a tetrastyle closely resembling the Temple of Jupiter and Minerva at Dougga, but even richer and more ornate in some of its details; it has not the defect observable in the latter, the want of antæ; pilasters being distinctly marked in the plan at the end of the cella walls.