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| ISBN-13: | 9780520947771 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of California Press |
| Publication date: | 10/19/2010 |
| Series: | Transformation of the Classical Heritage , #47 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 376 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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Peasant and Empire in Christian North Africa
By Leslie Dossey
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Copyright © 2010 The Regents of the University of CaliforniaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-94777-1
CHAPTER 1
Historical Overview
Roman Africa was the roughly 2,500-kilometer-long coastal plain between the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean, stretching from the Gulf of Gabes in Libya to the Moroccan Atlantic. It was separated from the rest of the African continent by the Sahara, which had become the world's most extensive desert sometime after 3000 B.C.E. The Atlas Mountains and their subsidiary ranges caught enough moisture to make some 300–500 kilometers at the northern edge of the continent arable. In eastern Libya, the desert reached nearly to the sea, and this constituted another barrier (though a passable one) between Latin North Africa and Greek Cyrenaica and Egypt, which were culturally and administratively distinct.
This region was known in antiquity, though not today, for its agricultural wealth. There were four main ecological zones—the immediate Mediterranean coast; a chain of relatively fertile hills and valleys that is known as the Tell in Algeria and becomes the hilly plateau of the Gebel in Libya; the open plains and steppe known as the Sahel in Tunisia; and the arid predesert. Sufficient rain fell on the coast and the Tell to allow for dry cultivation and arboriculture of Mediterranean crops such as grain, olives, figs, fruit trees, and vines (despite Roman disdain for African wine). The more arid plains and predesert required hard labor to support a large settled population, although by channeling the seasonal streams (wadis) that flowed from the mountains farmers could achieve remarkably high yields. The need for small-scale cooperation to build such irrigation systems helps explain why from an early period the village was the dominant form of social organization in much of North Africa.
The pastoralists who continued to cross the Sahara even after its desertification brought the region's other major source of wealth—trade goods such as ivory, gold, and slaves from sub-Saharan Africa. Transit across the desert eastward to the Nile and southward to central and western Africa had never wholly ceased, and it became easier due to the widespread use of the horse and camel in the course of the first millennium B.C.E.
The dominant ethnic group was what ancient Greek ethnographers called the Libyans, and modern historians the Berbers. Berber belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language group, which also includes ancient Egyptian, Semitic, and Chadic, the last of which is most closely related to Berber. The hypothesis is that the original Libyans moved west from the upper Nile across the Sahara and spread over most of North Africa. They adopted agriculture rather late, developing a seminomadic lifestyle ca. 4000 B.C.E. with a heavy emphasis on animal raising. Their skill at cavalry warfare (portrayed in Egyptian art) allowed them to conquer the farmers of the southern Sahara in the last two millennia B.C.E.
By the time Greek historical accounts begin to be written about them, the Libyans were separated into many different peoples—some seminomads in the desert, others settled farmers. The Garamantes and related Libyan tribes controlled the Saharan oases and supported themselves through a combination of pastoralism, farming, and trans-Saharan trade. A myriad of tribes and subtribes occupied the plains and the Tell. The most important of these in the Roman sources were the Mauri in Morocco and western Algeria, the Numidae of the Algerian Tell, and the seminomadic Gaetulians of the plains and predesert. The first centralized Libyan kingdoms had developed by the third century B.C.E., though they were unstable due to partible inheritance among the royal families. King Masinissa, who helped the Romans defeat the Carthaginians in the Second Punic War (218–201 B.C.E.), created the largest kingdom, Numidia.
The Carthaginians, or rather western Phoenicians (in Latin, Poenici), were the second major ethnic group of North Africa. They had founded a series of trade colonies on the African coast during the first half of the first millennium B.C.E. Although Carthage would eventually make most of these colonies tributary to itself, it is better to understand the Punic presence as a collection of independent cities rather than a unified empire. For the first four centuries of their existence, the Punic cities were more focused on Mediterranean trade than on the development of their African hinterland. This began to change after the Greeks gained control of Sicily in the fifth century B.C.E. and even more after the Roman victory in the First Punic War (264–241 B.C.E.). Forced to give up its overseas empire, Carthage turned northern Tunisia, especially the fertile Cap Bon, into a land of estates that produced cash crops such as grain, wine, and olive oil. Indeed, the only Punic books to be translated into Latin were agricultural manuals on how to farm such estates.
Because the Punic cities never had very large citizen bodies, they depended on the Libyans for their mercenary soldiers and farm laborers. In the rural territories of Carthage and other cities like Lepcis Magna in Libya, intermarriage and/or Libyan adoption of Punic customs occurred to such an extent that Greek and Roman ethnographers called the people "Libyo-Phoenicians." As late as the fifth century C.E., Punic remained the vernacular in the territory of Hippo Regius in western Algeria and in parts of rural Libya. The cults of Punic gods, in particular Tanit and Baal Hammon, spread farther than Punic political power ever did. Yet most of North Africa remained more Libyan than Punic, as demonstrated by the persistence of Libyan inscriptions, personal names, and gods into (and beyond) late antiquity. This was especially true for the mountainous and predesert zones, which had never particularly interested the Phoenicians or the Romans.
The immediate hinterland of Carthage became the Roman province of Africa after the Romans destroyed Carthage in the Third Punic War (146 B.C.E.). The Numidian kingdom with its main capital of Cirta in eastern Algeria was annexed partly by Julius Caesar as Africa Nova in 46 B.C.E. and completely in 33 B.C.E. To the west, Mauretania was for a time a client state centered on two royal cities, Iol (later Iol Caesarea) on the Algerian coast and the inland capital Volubilis in present-day Morocco. It wasn't fully absorbed into the empire until 40 C.E. The predesert areas to the south took the longest to subjugate. A Gaetulian revolt in 3–6 C.E. led to the permanent stationing of a legion, the Third Augustan, in southern Numidia. In 17 C.E., the Libyan leader Tacfarinas united Musulamians, the Gaetulians, and other tribes in a more serious uprising. The Garamantes of the Sahara were only quelled in the late first century C.E., when the Roman military captured their oasis base of Garama and reputedly crossed the Sahara, possibly as far as Lake Chad. After these wars of the first century C.E., there was not much trouble from the Libyan tribes for several centuries. Those outside the Roman borders became clients of the Romans, while the tribes within the North African provinces were placed under Roman prefects.
Of the North African provinces, the fertile Africa Proconsularis, the original province of Africa, was the most important, and its governor, a senatorial proconsul, was one of the most powerful senators in the Roman Empire. In the early imperial period, Proconsularis included most of Tunisia, eastern Algeria (the part annexed by Caesar), and a coastal strip of Libya that would come to be called Tripolitania after its three Punic cities (Lepcis Magna, Oea, and Sabratha). The proconsul technically had command over the legion stationed in North Africa, but from 40 C.E. the imperial legate of this legion (the Third Augustan) governed the military bases around the Aurès Mountains in southeastern Algeria almost independently. In the third century C.E. this area would be separated from Proconsularis to form part of the new province of Numidia. Mauretania—which was divided into Mauretania Caesariensis in the east and Mauretania Tingitana in the west—was a huge, rugged territory, with many mountains and few ports. Although largest in territory, the Mauretanias were the least significant provinces in terms of wealth and influence.
In addition to serving as Africa's proconsuls, Roman senators exercised unofficial power in the region through their estates, which were so extensive that reputedly under Nero six senators possessed one third of Africa! Much of this land was actually in the form of large imperial estates leased out to private individuals (usually senators) under long-term emphyteutic leases. These estates were concentrated especially in the fertile Bagradas Valley of northwest Tunisia, but even the interior of Algeria had its share of large estates.
Considering the size of its frontier (some 2,500 km long), North Africa was only lightly militarized. Its one legion, the Third Augustan, amounted to only 20,000–25,000 men (5,000 legionaries and 15,000–20,000 auxiliaries). Half of them were stationed in Mauretania Tingitana in the far west, and the rest just south and north of the Aurès (Numidia) and along the frontier (limes) of Mauretania Caesariensis and Tripolitania. The Mauretanias and southern Numidia were also the location of most of Africa's veteran colonies, including Thamugadi, Diana Veteranorum, and Sitifis. These soldiers and their descendants long maintained a separate identity from the indigenous society around them; it is in these areas that we find some of the most Roman of North African cities next to the territories of Libyan tribes.
Outside these militarized zones, North Africa was governed not by Roman officers or governors, but by local city magistrates. Several hundred North African cities collected taxes, ran local law courts, and erected and maintained public buildings. Although a few cities, such as the military bases Lambaesis and Thamugadi, had been founded by the Romans, the majority were of Punic or Libyan origin. The most important were a dozen or so megacities with extensive territories. Carthage itself, refounded as a Roman colony by Augustus, encompassed much of northern Tunisia in its pertica Carthaginiensium. Lepcis Magna, a Punic city on the Libyan coast that had been Rome's ally, controlled an astonishing 3,000–4,000 square kilometers of territory, most of it desert. Cirta, the former royal capital of Numidia, presided over a confederation of four cities in eastern Algeria that functioned almost as an autonomous province. At the other extreme were small noncitizen (peregrine) communities, like Siagu in northeastern Tunisia, whose territory was not more than 60–70 square kilometers (much of it mountainous) and whose entire population, including its hinterland, was some 4,000–7,000 people. What these cities had in common was obviously not their size or-in our sense—their urbanism, but the fact that they had been recognized by the Roman government as self-governing. The most humble were the peregrine civitates, whose residents were not Roman citizens and which kept their pre-Roman magistrates (sufetes). These communities often petitioned to become municipia, which had Roman constitutions and whose leaders obtained Roman citizenship. The most prestigious type of city was the colonia, all of whose citizens possessed Roman citizenship, even if (as was often the case) no Roman "colonists" had ever been settled there. In each community, the real power was held by the 30 to 100 local decurions who constituted the city council (ordo).
The most important function of these cities from the imperial perspective was the collection of taxes, particularly in-kind contributions of foodstuffs to the city of Rome (the annona). By the mid-first century C.E., North Africa was said to supply two thirds of Rome's grain, an estimated 10–18 million modii of cereals annually. Olive oil came second, at first from Tripolitania more than Tunisia (Lepcis Magna alone was fined 3 million pounds of olive oil annually by Julius Caesar). Large-scale export of Tunisian oil began in the late second century, and by the late fourth century, more than half of the amphoras at Rome were Tunisian. On a lesser scale, North Africans had to provide nonagricultural products such as cloth, Numidian marble, gold, and wild animals for the games. Despite the burden of imperial taxes, North African decurions had enough left over to finance extensive civic building campaigns in the late first through early third century C.E. Carthage built its theater, baths, circus, odeon, and aqueduct in the second century. This is the period when North African cities took on their characteristic Roman form, with monumental fora, capitols, amphitheaters, theaters, and public baths.
To pay for all of this, the land was farmed more intensively than it had ever been before. In the predesert, retaining walls were built to catch wadi runoff to cultivate olives and grain. In the arid plains of southern Proconsularis and Numidia, earth embankments and canals were used to distribute the floodwater coming off the mountains. The yields made possible by these types of irrigation—as high as 300:1—astonished the Romans. The technology behind this agricultural development came from the Libyans, not the Romans, who had little experience farming arid land such as this, although Roman taxes and property law no doubt provided the incentives to intensify production. The actual workers were primarily free peasants, who acted as sharecroppers or seasonal farm laborers for their city-dwelling landlords. We know most about the tenancy arrangements for the least-valued land. On the edges of the imperial estates, second-century emperors encouraged the development of previously uncultivated land through a type of sharecropping known as Mancian tenure, which was eventually adopted on private estates as well. Peasants who brought the land under cultivation were given hereditary tenure as long as they kept farming the land, and paid one third of their produce as rent. This promoted a stability of tenure, even if, as we shall see, it did not do much to enrich the cultivators. Under the early empire, the region's wealth was successfully channeled to the landholding senators, decurions, and, of course, the imperial government.
Some African decurions went beyond their home cities and entered the imperial elite. In the 70s C.E. there was only one African senator (from Cirta); a century later, there were a hundred. Well-known second-century literati such as the novelist/ philosopher Apuleius had African decurion origins. This entry of Africans into the imperial elite culminated with Septimius Severus (193–211), who founded the Severan dynasty of emperors. In origin an equestrian from a leading family of Lepcis Magna, he entered the Senate and pursued a career in the imperial military. Although the Severans are often blamed for favoring the military and debasing the imperial coinage, their reign proved a golden age for North Africa. Throughout the region, more civic monuments, temples, and statues went up than ever before. Septimius's hometown, Lepcis Magna, was particularly favored. Many small North African communities were granted municipal rights for the first time. Septimius turned eastern Algeria, where many of Africa's troops were stationed and which he personally visited, into the separate province of Numidia. The only people who do not appear to have benefited from Severan rule were the senators, who saw some of their prerogatives usurped by the equestrians and military men favored by the emperors.
The third-century crisis brought this golden age to an end. In 235, the commander of the Pannonian legions murdered the last of the Severans and took over the empire. To reward the troops who had brought him to power, this soldier emperor, Maximinus Thrax, aggressively collected taxes. His exactions sparked one of the few North African rebellions. In 238, landowners in Proconsularis killed an imperial procurator and got their proconsul Gordian proclaimed emperor. The North African military, however, remained loyal to Maximinus, revealing the fault line between the military based in Numidia and the landowners (and taxpayers) of Proconsularis. In the resulting conflict, the proconsul and his son died (along with many North Africans), but his grandson (Gordian III) was recognized as emperor by the Roman Senate.
For the next fifty years the empire as a whole descended into chaos. Gordian III was soon supplanted by another soldier emperor. Armies in search of donatives and better leadership acclaimed their generals emperor time after time. In order to pay their troops, the emperors debased the silver coinage, which at its worst had only three percent the silver content of the Severan period. The peoples on the borders of the empire took advantage of the Romans' disorder to invade. In North Africa, the Libyan tribe of the Bavares attacked Numidia and the Mauretanias. Southern Mauretania Tingitana proved so difficult to defend that by the end of the third century it was simply abandoned. There was a decline in public building in North African cities, and signs of economic restructuring: for example, the north Tunisian pottery industry that had supplied Italy with most of its fineware abruptly came to an end in the 230s, though new ceramic industries in other parts of North Africa sprang up to take its place. Although the core provinces of North Africa actually weathered the third-century crisis better than much of the empire, the crisis weakened the population's confidence in the imperial government and the value system that supported it. And there was one group that was particularly well placed to profit from this.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction 1
1 Historical Overview 11
Part One. The Making Of The Peasant Consumer
2 Rural Consumption in Early Imperial North Africa 31
3 A Late Antique Consumer Revolution? 62
Part Two. The Struggle For Community
4 Frustrated Communities: The Rise and Fall of the Self-Governing Village 101
5 Bishops Where No Bishops Should Be: The Phenomenon of the Rural Bishopric 125
Part Three. Preaching And Rebellion
6 Preaching to Peasants 147
7 Reinterpreting Rebellion: Textual Communities and the Circumcellions 173
Conclusion 195
Appendix. The Identifiable Rural Bishoprics 205
Notes 209
Bibliography 293
Index 333
What People are Saying About This
"This fine book breaks new ground in . . . its bold interpretation of . . . the development of civil and religious communities in the African countryside."—Church History