[273] This is nowhere expressly said, but it is clearly evident from the Periplus of the Egyptian. He speaks at numerous places of the intercourse of the non-Roman Africa with Arabia (c. 7, 8), and conversely of the Arabians with the non-Roman Africa (c. 17, 21, 31; and after him Ptolemaeus, i. 17, 6), and with Persia (c. 27, 33), and India (c. 21, 27, 49); as also of that of the Persians with India (c. 36), as well as of the Indian merchantmen with the non-Roman Africa (c. 14, 31, 32), and with Persia (c. 36) and Arabia (c. 32). But there is not a word indicating that these foreign merchants came to Berenice, Myos Hormos, or Leuce Come; indeed, when he remarks with reference to the most important mart of all this circle of traffic, Muza, that these merchants sail with their own ships to the African coast outside of the Straits of Bab El Mandeb (for that is for him τὸ πέραν), and to India, Egypt cannot possibly be absent by accident.
[274] In Bâmanghati (district Singhbhum) westward from Calcutta, a great treasure of gold coins of Roman emperors (Gordian and Constantine are named), is said to have come to light (Beglar, in Cunningham’s Archaeological Survey of India, vol. xiii. p. 72); but such an isolated find does not prove that regular intercourse extended so far. In Further India and China Roman coins have very seldom been found.
[275] The designation Afer does not belong to this series. So far as we can follow it back in linguistic usage, it is never given to the Berber in contrast to other African stocks, but to every inhabitant of the Continent lying over against Sicily, and particularly also to the Phoenician; if it has designated a definite people at all, this can only have been that, with which the Romans here first and chiefly came into contact (comp. Suetonius, vita Terent.). Reasons philological and real oppose themselves to our attempt in i. 162i. 154 to trace back the word to the name of the Hebrews; a satisfactory etymology has not yet been found for it.
[276] A good observer, Charles Tissot, (Géogr. de la province romaine de l’Afrique, i. p. 403) testifies that upwards of a third of the inhabitants of Morocco have fair or brown hair, and in the colony of the inhabitants of the Riff in Tangier two-thirds. The women made the impression on him of those of Berry and of Auvergne. Sur les hauts sommets de la chaîne atlantique, d’après les renseignements qui m’ont été fournis, la population tout entière serait remarquablement blonde. Elle aurait les yeux bleus, gris ou “verts, comme ceux des chats,” pour reproduire l’expression même dont s’est servi le cheikh qui me renseignait. The same phenomenon meets us in the mountain masses of Grand Kabylia and of the Aures, as well as on the Tunisian island Jerba and the Canary Islands. The Egyptian representations also show to us the Libu not red, like the Egyptians, but white, and with fair or brown hair.
[277] Cyprian, Quod idola dii non sint, c. 2: Mauri manifeste reges suos colunt nec ullo velamento hoc nomen obtexunt. Tertullian, Apolog. 24: Mauretaniae (dei sunt) reguli sui. C. I. L. viii., 8834: Iemsali L. Percenius L. f. Stel. Rogatus v. (s. l. a.), found at Thubusuptu in the region of Sitifis, which place may well have belonged to the Numidian kingdom of Hiempsal. Thus the inscription also of Thubursicum (C. I. L. viii. n. 7* comp. Eph. epigr. v. p. 651, n. 1478) must have rather been badly copied than falsified. Still, in the year 70, it was alleged that in Mauretania a pretender to the throne had ascribed to himself the name of Juba (Tacitus, Hist. ii. 58).
[278] This is attested for the year 70549 B.C. as regards both by Dio, xli. 42 (comp. Suetonius, Caes. 54). In the year 70747 B.C. Bogud lends assistance to the Caesarian governor of Spain (Bell. Alex. 59, 60), and repels an incursion of the younger Gnaeus Pompeius (Bell. Afric. 23). Bocchus, in combination with P. Sittius, in the African war makes a successful diversion against Juba and conquers even the important Cirta (Bell. Afr. 23; Appian, ii. 96; Dio, xliii. 3). The two obtained in return from Caesar the territory of the prince Massinissa (Appian, iv. 54). In the second Spanish war Bogud appears in the army of Caesar (Dio, xliii. 36, 38); the statement that the son of Bocchus had served in the Pompeian army (Dio, l.c.) must be a confusion, probably with Arabio the son of Massinissa, who certainly went to the sons of Pompeius (Appian, l.c.). After Caesar’s death Arabio possessed himself afresh of his dominion (Appian, l.c.), but after his death in the year 71440 B.C. (Dio, xlviii. 22) the Caesarian arrangement must have again taken effect in its full extent. The bestowal on Bocchus and Sittius is probably to be understood to the effect that, in the western part of the former Numidian kingdom otherwise left to Bocchus, the colony of Cirta to be founded by Sittius was to be regarded as an independent Roman town, like Tingi subsequently in the kingdom of Mauretania.
[279] If, according to Dio, xl. 43, Caesar in the year 721 33 B.C. after the death of Bocchus, nominates no successor, but makes Mauretania a province, and then (li. 15) in the year 72430 B.C., on occasion of the end of the queen of Egypt, there is mention of the marriage of her daughter with Juba and his investiture with his father’s kingdom, and, lastly (liii. 26), under the year 72925 B.C. there is reported Juba’s investiture with a portion of Gaetulia instead of his hereditary kingdom, as well as with the kingdoms of Bocchus and Bogud; only the last account confirmed by Strabo, xvii. 3, 7, p. 828, is correct. The first is at least incorrect in its way of apprehending the matter, as Mauretania evidently was not made a province in 721 33 B.C., but only the investiture was held in abeyance for the time being; and the second partly anticipates, since Cleopatra, born before the triumph about 719 (Eph. epigr. i., p. 276), could not possibly be married in 724, and is partly mistaken, because Juba certainly never got back his paternal kingdom as such. If he had been king of Numidia before 729, and if it had been merely the extent of his kingdom that then underwent a change, he would have counted his years from the first installation and not merely from 729.
[280] That Balbus carried on this campaign as proconsul of Africa, is shown in particular by the triumphal Fasti; but the consul L. Cornelius of the year 732 must have been another person, since Balbus, according to Velleius ii. 51, obtained that consular governorship, ex privato consularis, i.e. without having filled a curule office. The nomination, therefore, cannot have taken place according to the usual arrangement by lot. To all appearance he fell into disgrace with Augustus for good reasons on account of his Spanish quaestorship (Drumann ii. 609), and was then, after the lapse of more than twenty years, sent, as an extraordinary measure, to Africa, on account of his undoubted aptitude for this specially difficult task.
[281] The tribes whom Tacitus names in his account of the war, far from clear, as always, in a geographical point of view, may be in some measure determined; and the position between the Leptitanian and the Cirtensian columns (Ann. iii. 74) points for the middle column to Theveste. The town of Thala (Ann. iii. 20) cannot possibly be sought above Ammaedara, but is probably the Thala of the Jugurthan war in the vicinity of Capsa. The last section of the war has its arena in western Mauretania about Auzia (iv. 25), and accordingly in Thubuscum (iv. 24) there lurks possibly Thubusuptu or Thubusuctu. The river Pagyda (Ann. iii. 20) is quite indefinable.
[282] Ptolemaeus, iv. 3, 23, puts the Musulamii southward from the Aures, and it is only in accord therewith that they are called in Tacitus ii. 52, dwellers beside the steppe and neighbours of the Mauri; later they are settled to the north and west of Theveste (C. I. L. viii. 270, 10667). The Nattabutes dwelt according to Ptolemaeus l.c. southward of the Musulamii; subsequently we find them to the south of Calama (C. I. L. viii. 484). In like manner the Chellenses Numidae, between Lares and Althiburus (Eph. epigr. V. n. 639), and the conventus (civium Romanorum et) Numidarum qui Mascululae habitant (ib. n. 597), are probably Berber tribes transplanted from Numidia to the proconsular province.