Carthage: Encyclopedia II - Carthage - Roman Carthage

Carthage - Roman Carthage

The site was too well-chosen to let it go to waste, however, and a new city grew up there, eventually becoming the second largest city in the western half of the Roman empire. By the late 2nd century, Carthage was the center of the Roman province of Africa, with a population of 500,000 people. It briefly became the capital of an usurper, Domitius Alexander, in 308-311.

Carthage also became a centre of early Christianity. Tertullian rhetorically addresses the Roman governor with the fact that the Christians of Carthage that just yesterday were few in number, now "have filled every place among you—cities, islands, fortresses, towns, market-places, the very camp, tribes, companies, palaces, senate, forum; we have left nothing to you but the temples of your gods." (Apologeticus written at Carthage, c. 197.) It is worth noting that Tertullian omits any mention of the surrounding countryside or its network of villas not unlike colonial hacienda society.

In the first of a string of rather poorly reported Councils at Carthage a few years later, no fewer than seventy bishops attended. Tertullian later broke with the mainstream that was represented more and more by the bishop of Rome, but a more serious rift among Christians was the Donatist controversy, which drew in the young Augustine of Hippo while he finished his education at Carthage before moving on to Rome. In 397 at the Council at Carthage, the Biblical canon for the western Church was confirmed.

The political fallout from the deep disaffection of African Christians was a crucial factor in the ease with which Carthage and the other centres were captured in the 5th century by Gaiseric, king of the Vandals, who defeated the Byzantine general Bonifacius and made the city his capital. Gaiseric was considered a heretic too, an Arian, and though Arians commonly despised Catholic Christians, a mere promise of toleration might have caused the city's population to accept him. After a failed attempt to recapture the city in the 5th century, the Byzantines finally subdued the Vandals in the 6th century. Using Gaiseric's grandson's deposal by a distant cousin, Gelimer, as a pretext, the Byzantines dispatched an army to conquer the Vandal kingdom. On Sunday, October 15, 533, the Byzantine general Belisarius, accompanied by his wife Antonina, made his formal entry into Carthage, sparing it a sack and a massacre.

During the emperor Maurice's reign, Carthage was made into an Exarchate, as was Ravenna in Italy. These two exarchates were the western bulwarks of Byzantium, all that remained of its power in the west. In the early 7th century, it was the Exarch of Carthage, Heraclius (of Armenian origin), who overthrew Emperor Phocas.

The Byzantine Exarchate was not, however, able to withstand the Arab conquerors of the 7th century. The first Arab assault on the Exarchate of Carthage was initiated from Egypt without much success in 647. A more protracted campaign lasted from 670-683. In 698 the Exarchate of Africa was finally overrun by the rising forces of Islam, and Carthage itself was destroyed by the Arab invaders, to be replaced by Tunis as the major regional center.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Roman Carthage", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki