CHAPTER V.
CONSTANTINE.
The remarkable situation of the city of Constantine has pointed it out from the earliest times as an important fortress, and as one of the natural capitals of a country which has been the scene of perpetual wars and revolutions.
It formerly bore the name of Cirta or Kirta, a word which in the Numidian dialect signified an isolated rock.
It was the capital of Syphax, who according to Livy possessed a splendid palace here; of Masinissa and Micipsa, the last of whom, as stated by Strabo, adorned it with many fine buildings, and it was the scene of some of the most stirring events of the second and third Punic wars. Here the fair Sophonisba, wife of Syphax, was taken by Masinissa, who himself married her, and on her being claimed by Scipio, as the prisoner of the State, he sent her a cup of poison, which she instantly drank, merely remarking that she would have died with more honour had she not wedded at her funeral.
It was erected into a colony by Julius Cæsar, under the government of Sallust, to recompense the partisans of Publius Sittius Nucerinus, who had rendered him important services, and was called Cirta Sittianorum or Cirta Julia till the fourth century, when it received the name of Constantina, which it ever afterwards retained.
Owing partly to its natural strength, and partly to the fact of its bishop being a Donatist, it escaped destruction when Genseric and his Vandals overran the country; and Belisarius, when he drove out the barbarians, found the Roman buildings still intact.
After the Arab invasion, in the 7th century, it fell into decay, and during the successive sieges which it had to withstand, and the centuries of Arab and Turkish misrule which succeeded, its ancient monuments were destroyed; but it was not till after the French occupation that these entirely disappeared, to make room for inevitable ‘municipal improvements.’
Constantine occupies the summit of a plateau of rock, nearly quadrilateral in shape, the faces corresponding to the cardinal points, and its surface sloping from north to south. Its sides rise perpendicularly nearly 1,000 feet from the bed of the river Roumel, the ancient Ampsaga, which surrounds it on the north and east, and it is connected on the west side only, by an isthmus, with the mainland.