[283] In the year 70 the troops of the two Mauretanias amounted together, in addition to militia levied in large numbers, to 5 alae and 19 cohortes (Tacitus, Hist. ii. 58), and so, if we reckon on the average every fourth as a double troop, to about 15,000 men. The regular army of Numidia was weaker rather than stronger.
[284] Inscription C. I. L. viii. 8369 of the year 129: Termini positi inter Igilgilitanos, in quorum finibus kastellum Victoriae positum est, et Zimiz(es), ut sciant Zimizes non plus in usum se habere ex auctoritate M. Vetti Latronis pro(curatoris) Aug(usti) qua(m) in circuitu a muro kast(elli) p(edes) D. The Zimises are placed by the Peutingerian map alongside of Igilgili to the westward.
[285] If the praefect of a cohort doing garrison duty in Numidia held the command at the same time over six Gaetulian tribes (nationes, C. I. L. v. 5267), men that were natives of Mauretania were employed as irregulars in the neighbouring province. Irregular Mauretanian horsemen frequently occur, especially in the later imperial period. Lusius Quietus under Trajan, a Moor and leader of a Moorish troop (Dio lxviii. 32), no Λίβυς ἐκ τῆς ὑπηκόου Λιβύης, ἀλλ' ἐξ ἀδόξου καὶ ἀπῳκισμένης ἐσχατιᾶς (Themistius, Or. xvi p. 250 Dind.), was without doubt a Gaetulian sheikh, who served with his followers in the Roman army. That his home was formally independent of the empire, is not affirmed in the words of Themistius; the “subject-territory” is that with Roman organisation, the ἐσχατιά its border inhabited by dependent tribes.
[286] To the inscriptions, which prove this (C. I. L. viii. p. xviii. 747), falls now to be added the remarkable dedication of the leader of an expeditionary column from the year 174, found in the neighbourhood of Géryville (Eph. epigr. v. n. 1043).
[287] The tumultus Gaetulicus (C. I. L. viii. 6958) was rather an insurrection than an invasion.
[288] Ptolemy certainly takes as boundary of the province of Caesarea the line above the Shott, and does not reckon Gaetulia as belonging to it; on the other hand he extends that of Tingis as far as the Great Atlas. Pliny v. 4, 30, numbers among the subject peoples of Africa “all Gaetulia as far as the Niger and the Ethiopian frontier,” which points nearly to Timbuctoo. The latter statement will accord with the official conception of the matter.
[289] Already in Nero’s time Calpurnius (Egl. iv. 40) terms the shore of Baetica trucibus obnoxia Mauris.—If under Pius the Moors were beaten off and driven back as far as and over the Atlas (vita Pii, 5; Pausanias viii. 43), the sending of troops at that time from Spain to the Tingitana (C. I. L. iii. 5212–5215) makes it probable that this attack of the Moors affected Baetica, and the troops of the Tarraconensis marching against these followed them over the straits. The probably contemporary activity of the Syrian legion at the Aures ([p. 320]) suggests moreover that this war extended also to Numidia.—The war with the Moors under Marcus (vita Marci, 21, 22; vita Severi, 2), had its scene essentially in Baetica and Lusitania.—A governor of Hither Spain under Severus had to fight with the “rebels” by water and by land (C. I. L. ii. 4114).—Under Alexander (vita, 58) there was fighting in the province of Tingi, but without mention of Spain in the case.—From the time of Aurelian (vita Saturnini, 9) there is mention of Mauro-Spanish conflicts. We cannot exactly determine the time of a sending of troops from Numidia to Spain and against the Mazices (C. I. L. viii. 2786), where presumably not the Mazices of the Caesariensis but those of the Tingitana on the Riff (Ptolem. iv. 1, 10), are meant; perhaps with this is connected the fact that Gaius Vallius Maximianus, as governor of Tingitana, achieved in the province Baetica (according to Hirschfeld, Wiener Stud. vi. 123, under Marcus and Commodus) a victory over the Moors and relieved towns besieged by them (C. I. L. ii. 1120, 2015); these events prove at least that the conflicts with the Moors on the Riff and the associates that flocked to them from the country lying behind did not cease. When the Baquates on the same coast besieged the pretty remote Cartenna (Tenes) in the Caesariensis (C. I. L. viii. 9663), they perhaps came by sea. Where the wars with the Moors under Hadrian (vita, 5, 12) and Commodus (vita, 13) took place is not known.
[290] More information than in the scanty accounts of Victor and Eutropius is supplied as to this war by the inscribed stones, C. I. L. viii. 2615, 8836, 9045, 9047. According to these the Quinquegentiani may be followed out from Gallienus to Diocletian. The beginning is made by the Baquates who, designated as Transtagnenses, must have dwelt beyond the Shott. Four “kings” combine for an expedition. The most dreaded opponent is Faraxen with his gentiles Fraxinenses. Towns like Mileu in Numidia not far from Cirta and Auzia in the Caesariensis are attacked, and the citizens must in good part defend themselves against the enemy. After the end of the war Maximian constructs great magazines in Thubusuctu not far from Saldae. These fragmentary accounts give in some measure an insight into the relations of the time.
[291] Apart from the coins this is proved also by the inscriptions. According to the comparison, for which I am indebted to Herr Euting, the great mass of the old Punic inscriptions, that is, those written probably before the destruction of Carthage, falls to Carthage itself (about 2500), the rest to Hadrumetum (9), Thugga (the famous Phoenico-Berber one), Cirta (5), Iol-Caesarea (1). The new Punic occur most numerously in and around Carthage (30), and generally they are found not unfrequently in the proconsular province, also in Great Leptis (5) and on the islands of Girba (1) and Cossura (1); in Numidia, in and near Calama (23), and in Cirta (15); in Mauretania hitherto only in Portus Magnus (2).
[292] The coining in Africa ceases in the main after Tiberius, and thereafter, since African inscriptions from the first century after Christ are before us only in very small numbers, for a considerable period documents fail us. The coins of Babba in the Tingitana, going from Claudius down to Galba, have exclusively Latin legends; but the town was a colony. The Latin-Punic inscriptions of Great Leptis, C. I. L. viii. 7, and of Naraggara, C. I. L. viii. 4636, may doubtless belong to the time after Tiberius, but as bilingual tell rather for the view that, when they were set up, the Phoenician language was already degraded.