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Numidia () was the ancient kingdom of the Numidians in northwest Africa, initially comprising the northern part of what is now Algeria, but later expanding into modern Tunisia and Libya. The polity was originally divided between the Massylii state in the east, with its capital at Cirta, and the Masaesyli state in the west, with its capital at Siga. During the Second Punic War (218–201 BC), Masinissa, king of the Massylii, defeated Syphax of the Masaesyli to unify Numidia into the first unified Berbers state for Numidians in present-day Algeria. Initially a sovereign state and an ally of Roman Empire, the kingdom later alternated between being a Roman province and a Roman client state.
Numidia, at its foundation, was bordered by the Moulouya River to the west, Africa Proconsularis and Cyrenaica to the east. the Mediterranean Sea to the north, and the Sahara to the south so that Numidia entirely surrounded Carthage except towards the sea. before Masinissa expanded past the Moulouya and vassalizing Bokkar, and reaching the Atlantic Ocean ocean to the west.
Numidians famously appear in works by Ancient Greece historians and travellers such as Herodotus and Pausanias and later Roman Republic Historians such as Pliny the Elder, Livy and Sallust, in the First Punic War (264–241 BC), when the Greek historian Polybius first noted the strength and versatility of the Numidian cavalry. He also indicated the peoples and territory west of Carthage including the entire north of Algeria as far as the river Mulucha (Muluya), about west of Oran.
By the time of the Second Punic War in 218 BC, the previously scattered Numidian tribes had consolidated into two great and rival tribal groups: the Massylii in eastern Numidia, and the Masaesyli in the west. During the first part of the Second Punic War, the eastern Massylii, under their king Gala, were allied with Carthage, while the western Masaesyli, under king Syphax, were allied with Rome. The Kingdom of Masaesyli under Syphax extended from the Moulouya river to Oued Rhumel. The Romans worked hard to cultivate Syphax's friendship, and helped to train his troops in the techniques of infantry warfare.
Syphax initially revolted against Carthage, but Gala’s son Masinissa, raised in Carthage, rallied forces and helped Carthage defeat Syphax twice by 213 BC, forcing him to flee. Masinissa then joined the Carthaginian general Hasdrubal Barca in Spain, where he played a key role in Carthaginian campaigns against Rome. After Gala’s death, Carthage stripped Masinissa’s family of their lands, prompting him to ally with Rome. Returning to Africa, he initially partnered with Syphax against Carthage. However, Hasdrubal married his daughter Sophonisba to Syphax, securing his loyalty to Carthage. Syphax defeated Masinissa twice in 205 BC, forcing him to retreat into the mountains, where he waged a guerrilla campaign, eluding capture and eventually joining forces with Scipio’s Roman army.
Scipio Africanus honored Masinissa with a Roman Crown, a gold patera, a Curule seat, an ivory sceptre, a toga picta, and a tunica palmata—the traditional symbols of a Roman triumphator. Scipio declared that nothing was more magnificent among the Romans than these honors, implying that Masinissa was the only foreigner worthy of such distinction. These rewards recognized Masinissa’s crucial role in securing Rome’s victory in the war.
Masinissa regained his father's kingdom, and also took control of much of Syphax's territory. The Second Punic War ended with a Roman victory at the battle of Zama in 202 BC, and Masinissa of the Massylii consolidated his position as the first king of a united Numidia with enthusiastic Roman patronage. The Romans were determined to keep a powerful ally in Africa to prevent the Carthaginians from threatening their hard-won hegemony in the western Mediterranean. Having been educated in Carthage, Masinissa felt no hostility toward the Carthaginians. Several of his relatives bore Carthaginian names and his brother and uncle had family connections with Hannibal through marriage, and his grandson would later serve as a general there. However, to expand Numidia’s wealth, he sought to enlarge its lands — and the only valuable ones available belonged to Carthage.
Massinissa, constantly encroaching on the territory left to the Carthaginians, had, by 158 BC, conquered Lepcis Magna and the Tripolitanian coast, bringing under his authority all the Berber tribes established between Cyrenaica and the Rhumel River. Masinissa's territory extended from the Mulucha River to the boundary of the Carthaginian territory, and also southeast as far as Cyrenaica to the gulf of Sirte, so that Numidia entirely surrounded Carthage (Appian, Punica, 106) except towards the sea. Furthermore, after the capture of Syphax the king of the Masaesyli (West Algeria) with his capital based in SigaBakhta Moukraenta Abed (2026). 9783838178523, Presses Académiques Francophones. . ISBN 9783838178523 and after losing Siga had relocated to a temporary capital in Tinga, Bokkar, had become a vassal of Massinissa. Massinissa had also penetrated as far south beyond the Atlas to the Gaetuli and Fezzan was part of his domain.
According to Appian's sometimes unreliable account, three main factions dominated Carthage’s internal politics in the mid-2nd century BC: a pro-Roman group supposedly led by Hanno III the Great, a pro-Numidian faction under a "Hannibal the Starling," and a "democratic" faction led by Hamilcar "the Samnite" and Carthalo. In practice, the first two groups likely shared similar goals, since Rome and Numidia were closely aligned. The "democrats," by contrast, appear to have favored wider political participation for ordinary citizens and opposed the entrenched aristocracy—continuing the reformist tradition of Hannibal Barca’s era.
When Masinissa seized more Carthaginian territory in 152 BC, political tensions within the city intensified. The democratic, now nationalist, faction gained control and exiled around forty of their rivals, including the "Starling." They even forced citizens to swear never to recall them. The exiles fled to Numidia, giving Masinissa the perfect excuse to intervene. After his son Gulussa was ambushed by Hamilcar’s men, the elderly but still energetic king invaded Carthaginian lands in 151 BC with an army of 52,000 men, besieging a town called "Oroscopa." Hasdrubal, leading a force of 30,000 men to relieve the city, was decisively defeated by Gulussa, Massinissa’s son, in 150 BC. By preparing to fight back, Carthage effectively broke the peace treaty of 201 BC—an act that would soon trigger Rome’s wrath and lead directly to the Third Punic War.
Learning that Carthage had waged war against a prince allied with Rome, the Romans dispatched an army of 80,000 men to Africa. In 146 BC Carthage was obliterated by the armies of Consul Scipio Aemilianus after a 3 years long siege and 8 days of urban fighting in the city. The victors reduced Carthage’s territory to a Roman province, which they named the "Province of Africa."
Politically, he engaged in the eastern Mediterranean, aiding Rome in the Macedonian Wars, sending troops to Greece, and supplying grain to Delos (which honored him). Dubious of his intentions in the aftermath of the Macedonian wars, Rome rejected his request to visit the Roman Senate and make a sacrifice in the Capitoline Hill. Masinissa also maintained ties with Hellenistic monarchs such as Nicomedes II of Bithynia, while his sons received their education in Greece , probably Athens.
Masinissa ruled for 55 years until his death in 148 BC, shortly before Rome’s destruction of Carthage in 146 BC. Micipsa succeeded him, reigning for another 30 years. The three sons of Massinissa jointly ruled Numidia, under Roman oversight. At the request of Masinissa, Scipio Aemilianus arranged a division of Masinissa's kingdom and inheritance. Micipsa managed the palace and the treasury in Cira, Gulussa was given command of the Numidian army and Mastanabal was appointed chief Judicial authority in the kingdom. On the death of his two brothers in 145 BC, Micipsa, finding himself sole heir to the kingdom of Massinissa, reigned in Cirta, with the help of his two sons Adherbal and Hiempsal I, and his nephew Jugurtha, son of his brother Manastabal. An ambitious Jugurtha proved to be a capable warrior in the Roman siege of Numantia in 134 BC.
Determined to end Jugurtha’s defiance, Rome sent the propraetor Aulus against him in 109 BC. However, Aulus was ambushed near Suthul and forced to pass under the yoke with his soldiers. Consul Metellus then took command, leading a victorious battle against Jugurtha’s forces near Theveste. Jugurtha resorted to guerrilla warfare against Metellus whose troops were constantly harassed across Numidia. Later, Metellus was compelled to retreat near Zama in 109 BC.
In 108 BC, after regrouping, Metellus invaded Numidia, pushing Jugurtha’s Berber forces into retreat and capturing Cirta. Jugurtha fled to the Gaetulians and sought aid from Bocchus. Metellus was recalled and replaced by Consul Gaius Marius, who led an army of 50,000 men. Marius defeated the combined forces of Jugurtha and Bocchus near Sitifis after a three-day battle and returned to Cirta. Bocchus sought peace and, at the urging of Marius’s lieutenant Sulla, betrayed Jugurtha. Luring his son-in-law into his camp, Bocchus handed Jugurtha over to the Romans in 106 BC. On January 1, 104 BC, Marius celebrated a triumph in Rome, with the captured Jugurtha paraded in chains. That same evening, Jugurtha was thrown into the Tullianum prison, where he soon died from cold and starvation. (2026). 9781135936747, Routledge. ISBN 9781135936747
The kings of Numidia and Mauretania often took advantage of Roman internal conflicts to settle their own disputes. During the civil war between Marius and Sulla, Marius, exiled by Sulla, sought refuge with Hiarbas, while Hiempsal II supported the dictator Sulla in 88 BC. Hiarbas, with the help of Marius’s supporters, defeated his brother Hiempsal and seized his kingdom. To counter Hiarbas and the Marian faction he had revived in Africa, Sulla sent Pompey with six Roman legion. Bocchus supported Pompey’s forces with a large contingent of Mauretanian cavalry commanded by Gauda, the son of his son Bogud. Hiarbas, defeated by Pompey and besieged in Bulla Regia, was eventually forced to surrender to Gauda and was executed after enduring severe torture. Hiempsal II regained his kingdom and was granted Hiarbas’s former territory in 81 BC. Around the same time, Bocchus died, and Mauretania was divided between his two sons: Bocchus II, who ruled the eastern part of the kingdom with the old Punic city of Iol as his capital, and Bogud, who inherited the western part with Tingi as its center.
In the meanwhile, the Alexandrian war in Ptolemaic Egypt ended favorably for Caesar, who installed Cleopatra as queen of Egypt, and moved on to suppress Pontic War in Armenia. The remnants of Pompey’s forces, having regrouped in Africa under Varus, were joined by Titus Labienus (a former lieutenant of Caesar), Metellus Scipio (Pompey’s father-in-law), Afranius, Porcius Cato, and Gnaeus Pompey. With Juba’s support and his Berber troops, the republican army held off Caesar, forcing him to launch a new campaign against them.
From Rome, Caesar negotiated with Publius Sittius, a Campanian adventurer commanding a small army of Italians, Gauls, Spaniards, and Berbers in Africa. Promising Bocchus II and Bogud portions of Juba’s territory if they supported him, Caesar landed near Hadrumetum in November 47 BC. Initially outnumbered, with only 5,000 soldiers against his opponents’ 60,000, Caesar failed to take Hadrumetum but gained the allegiance of Ruspina and Leptis Parva. Meanwhile, his quaestor Sallustius Crispus captured the Cercina Islands, a key supply base for Pompey’s forces. Sittius captured Cirta, threatening Juba’s rear and forcing him to divert forces to deal with the insurgent Gaetulians. Reinforced with 30,000 men at Ruspina, Caesar besieged Thapsus. On February 6, 46 BC, he decisively defeated the allied forces attempting to relieve the city. Juba, attempting to reach Zama Regia, found its gates closed and was killed by a slave as Caesar entered the city in triumph. Scipio, cornered by Sittius’s sailors in the Gulf of Hippo, stabbed himself and drowned.
Victorious, Caesar sent Juba I’s son to Rome, where he was educated in Roman culture and loyalty to its power. Caesar annexed eastern Numidia into the Roman province of Africa Nova, appointing his lieutenant Sallustius Crispus as governor. Sallust exploited the province, amassing wealth under the pretext of punishing it for supporting Pompey. Bocchus II was granted additional territory in Mauretania Sitifensis, while Bogud received western Numidia. Sittius, made legate, was awarded Cirta and its dependencies, taken from Masanasses, an ally of Juba. The surviving republican leaders fled to Spain, where Caesar, reinforced by Berber contingents under Bogud, defeated the Pompeian forces at Munda the following year. This marked the end of significant resistance to Caesar. Eastern Numidia was annexed in 46 BC to create a new Roman province, Africa Nova. Western Numidia was also annexed as part of the province Africa Nova after the death of its last king, Arabio, in 40 BC, and subsequently the province (except of western Numidia) was united with province Africa Vetus by Emperor Caesar Augustus in 25 BC, to create the new province Africa Proconsularis. During the brief period (30–25 BC) Juba II (son of Juba I) ruled as a client king of Numidia on the territory of former province Africa Nova.
Massinissa relied on matrimonial alliances and the use of tribal hostages. He also raised an army made up of tribal contingents, which he gradually organized into a more regular force following the Carthaginian model. This structure required solid finances and enabled the king to assert his authority. His power also rested on the unity of the Massylian people and the cohesion of tribes around his person, possibly reinforced by a semi-divine aura. Upon his death, the dynasty remained fragile: succession nominally fell to the eldest male heir, but was often contested by brothers and cousins, as shown by Jugurtha, who imposed himself through force and the elimination of rivals. Thus, although the Numidian kingdom was not a centralized modern state, neither was it merely a patchwork of independent tribes: it represented a genuine political construction, able to resist and negotiate with the great Mediterranean powers before its eventual absorption by Rome.
In 179 BC, King Masinissa of Numidia received a golden crown from the inhabitants of Delos, as he had offered them a shipload of grain. A statue of Masinissa was erected in Delos in his honor, with an inscription by a native from Rhodes. His sons, too, had statues erected on the island of Delos; the King of Bithynia, Nicomedes, had also dedicated a statue to Masinissa. By 143 AD, the export of olive oil from Numidia rivaled its grain export throughout the Roman Empire.
In 200 BC, the Roman Army stationed in Macedonia received 17,508 hectoliters of Numidian wheat; in 198 BC, the Roman Army in Greece was sent, once again, the same amount of wheat. In 191 BC, Rome received 26,262 hectoliters of wheat and 21,885 hectoliters of barley; Greece, the same year, received 43,770 hectoliters of wheat and 26,262 hectoliters of barley. Then, in 171 BC, the Roman army in Macedonia received 87,540 hectoliters of wheat.
These numbers only represent a fraction from the reserves of the kingdom of Massinissa. His contributions to the Romans in 170 BC appear to be only a fraction of the kingdom's total production, as he was upset by Rome's decision to pay for the provided wheat that year. Massinissa hadn't laid his hands yet on the fertile lands of the Emporia (North West Ancient Libya) nor the great plains full of fertile soil yet; generally, barley was his kingdom's main produce, as they grew barley in light, mountainous and hilly soil which is suitable for its cultivation.
Far from being passive receivers of a ready-made civilization, the Numidians actively participated in shaping what became a distinctive North African culture. The Numidian capital city of Cirta embodied a Punic-Numidian cultural fusion enriched by Greek influence. This was illustrated by the votive Stele dedicated to the Punic gods Baal Hammon and Tanit, discovered in the Constantinian suburb of El-Hofra and dated to the 3rd–2nd centuries BC.
Alongside Punic, the Libyco-Berber script was also in use, an alphabet that survives among the Tuareg people as Tifinagh, a name probably meaning "the Punic letters." Only at Dougga did the Numidian kings attempt to use Libyco-Berber in official inscriptions, showing the coexistence of both linguistic traditions.
According to the French historian Gilber Meynier, both a Greek and later an Italian colony, likely Punicized, lived at Cirta. The stelae bear inscriptions in Punic and Greek, reflecting the city’s multicultural character. The Numidian kings and elites were well-versed in Greek, which was then the international language of diplomacy and refined culture across the Mediterranean, including in Rome. When Scipio Aemilianus captured Carthage in 146 BC, he conversed in Greek with King Massinissa, and the latter’s descendants also spoke Greek. By the 1st century BC, Numidia had its own diplomatic and cultural ties with the Greek world.
Numidian urban life reflected this same cultural blend. Historian Gabirel Camps stresses that cities such as Cirta, Siga, and Volubilis were not Carthaginian colonies, but authentic centers of Punic culture. They displayed Punic urban planning, sanctuaries, and inscriptions while retaining Berber characteristics. Architecture provides striking examples of this synthesis. The Medracen mausoleum, built in the 4th or 3rd century BC, is a vast royal tomb that combines the Berber form of the stepped tumulus with Punic and Hellenistic features such as Doric columns, Egyptian-style cornices, and cedar ceilings. Other mausolea at Dougga, Maktar, and Khroub illustrate the same mixture. These monuments show that Numidian elites were already deeply Punicized well before Carthage’s destruction, while still maintaining indigenous forms.
Massinissa was likely the first Numidian ruler to Hellenize his court, turning it into a cultural center visited by figures like Polybius and Ptolemy VIII. His coinage displayed Greek artistic traits (a diademed bust, the elephant symbol of Numidian royalty). He may have pioneered the use of Numidian marble and adopted Hellenistic-style architecture, including monumental tombs.
The Numidian kingdom maintained trade relations with the Iberian Peninsula, Carthage, and Rome, as well as the Greek world, including Rhodes, Athens, and Delos. Grain was the primary export. Historian Camps, referencing Livy, provides detailed records of Numidian grain exports to Rome: 14,000 quintals of wheat and 10,500 quintals of barley in 200 BC, 14,000 quintals of wheat in 198 BC, 56,000 quintals of wheat and 28,000 quintals of barley in 191 BC, and 70,000 quintals of wheat in 170 BC.
Massinissa used to provide to the population of Rhodes Toja wood and Ivory, in Cirta multiple Rhodian amphorae from the 2nd century B.C were found in burial sites and one of them carries the inscription (Sodamos). (2026). 9782271063427, Editions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique. . ISBN 9782271063427 Massinissa encouraged Greek merchants to settle in his cities and welcomed figures like the historian Polybius. During his reign, North Africa established direct trade connections with both the East and the West, bypassing Carthage. This transformation was largely due to Massinissa’s efforts.
Numidia took over most of the famous Carthaginian ports which were one of the most important in the mediterranean, the famous Roman orator and historian Cicero tells us that the Numidian king had a war navy to protect his trade, in one story, the fleet of Massinissa sailed to Malta and confiscated large ivory elephant pillars from the temple of Juno and returned to Numidia and gave it as a prize to Massinissa. When the king knew about the origin of the gift, he prepared a nimble fleet of five ships and sent it back to where it came from. This funny story tells us that not only Massinissa had enough ships to perform tasks at will but also these fleets were functioning outside of African shorelines towards the central Mediterranean.
Lambaesis was the seat of the Legio III Augusta, and the most important strategic centre. It commanded the passes of the Aurès Mountains (Mons Aurasius), a mountain block that separated Numidia from the Gaetuli Berber tribes of the desert, and which was gradually occupied in its whole extent by the Romans under the Empire. Including these towns, there were altogether twenty that are known to have received at one time or another the title and status of Roman colonies; and in the 5th century, the Notitia Dignitatum enumerates no fewer than 123 sees whose bishops assembled at Carthage in 479.
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