page_title: History of Roman-era Tunisia
section_title: Berber revolts
hierarchical_section_title: History of Roman-era Tunisia / Roman Province of Africa / Berber revolts
caption_attribution_description: mosaïque d'Africa à El Jem (tunisie)
context_page_description: The history of Roman-era Tunisia begins with the history of the Roman Africa Province. Rome took control of Carthage after the Third Punic War. There was a period of Berber kings allied with Rome. Lands surrounding Carthage were annexed and reorganized, and the city of Carthage rebuilt, becoming the third city of the Empire. A long period of prosperity ensued; a cosmopolitan culture evolved. Trade quickened, the fields yielded their fruits. Settlers from across the Empire migrated here, forming a Latin-speaking ethnic mix. The Carthaginian society made up of native Phoenician-speaking Libyans and Phoenicians, as well as Berber-speaking Libyans, was becoming gradually romanized, some native Libyans like Apuleius and Septimus Severus became great figures of the Roman empire. Christianity became gradually spread among the Northwest Africans, offering to the Roman Catholicism three of its Popes, as well as Augustine of Hippo. During the eclipse of the Roman Empire, several prominent Libyans revolted. A generation later the Vandals, a Germanic tribe, arrived in Tunisia with the help of the Maurii and reigned over the Roman province for nearly a century.
context_section_description: The two armed conflicts described below may or may not differ from the revolt of Tacfarinas in 17–24 AD. According to one view, the two conflicts were not class struggles, nor Berber versus Roman insurrections, although containing potential elements of each. More likely the fighting concerned "a dynastic struggle pitching one lot of African nobles, with their tribes, against another." Although enjoying maybe "unquestioningly loyal tribesmen on [their] great estates" the nobles themselves held a divided loyalty stemming from their ambivalent role as mediators between Roman Empire elites and local tribal life, mostly rural. Based on subsistence farming, or herding, such tribes remained remote from the literate cities. To their Berber subjects "the nobles offered protection in exchange for tribute and military service." Protection promised safety against attacks by another tribe, but also against slave raiders from the cities. The nobles themselves required revenue and the ability to marshall "armed might" on the one hand, and on the other "their fluency in Roman cultural forms and their ability to communicate as equals with the rest of the Roman elites." If so equipped the nobles "occupied key positions in Roman provincial administration." Yet an unexpected shift in status among the nobles might on occasion trigger a desperate resort to arms, an intra-noble dynastic struggle.
  Another view holds that the nobles Firmus and Gildo each continued the struggle of the commoner Tacfarinas, that the fight involved class issues and pitted Berber against Roman. In the intervening 350 years the struggle had gone on—hot or cold, or 'underground'. Both Firmus and Gildo enlisted the dispossessed by aligning with the dissenting Donatist churches and its more radical circumcellion movement. The conflicts were part of the long effort by native agricultural people to reclaim their farming and pasture lands, seized by the Romans as a result of military victories. Professor Laroui differentiates two primary perspectives on Maghriban history of the Roman period, i.e., colonial and liberal. The colonial perspective conforms to the "dynastic struggle view" first suggested above; it adopts the interests of Imperial Rome and its clients. The liberal perspective takes the conquered and colonized view, that of the dispossessed farmers and herders, the expropriated natives—former proprietors of the land. Taking this "liberal" view, Laroui sees the conflict here as centuries old, and as more of an ethnic struggle for fairness and justice.
  Firmus (died 375) and Gildo (died 398) were half-brothers, from a family of Berber landowners whose Roman affiliation was recognized by the imperial government at Constantinople. Their father Nubel was known as a regulus ("little king") of a Mauri tribe of Berbers, according to the historian Ammianus Marcellinus. Nubel the father held three positions: influential leader in Berber tribal politics; Roman official with high connections; and, private master of large land holdings. Nubel probably is the same person as Flavius Nubel, the son of a vir perfectissimus and Comes (Roman titles of prestige and authority). Flavius Nubel himself was a commander of Roman cavalry, whose inscription also credits to him the construction of a local Christian church. Six sons of Nubel are listed: Firmus, Sammac, Gildo, Mascezel, Dius, and Mazuc. In addition to his wife Nonnica, the father Nubel had concubines, "a Christianized version of polygamy." The names of Nubel's children probably indicate an ambivalent cultural strategy, half-imperial, half-tribal, half Roman, half Berber. Gildo from the Libyan root GLD signifies a "ruler" (in modern Berber "Aguelid"). Firmus and Dius derive from Latin. Sammac and Mascezel are also Berber. A daughter's name Cyria is Greek.
caption: Residential mosaic of Roman-era Tunisia.
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