Thapsus, also known as Tampsus and as Thapsus Minor to distinguish it from Thapsos, was a Carthaginian and Roman Empire port near present-day Bekalta, Tunisia.
Geography
Thapsus was established on
Ras ed-Dimas, an easily defended promontory on Tunisia's
Mediterranean coast. It was near a
salt lake. It was about from the island of
Lampedusa and approximately southeast of
Ancient Carthage.
History
Thapsus was founded by the
Phoenicians. It served as a waypoint on the trade routes between the Strait of Gibraltar and
Phoenicia and as a market for the inland products of the area.
Diodorus Siculus write that Agathocles of Syracuse conquered the city.
[ Diodorus Siculus, Library, §20.17.1]
During his civil war, Julius Caesar defeated Metellus Scipio and the king JubaI at the costly 46BC Battle of Thapsus. Caesar exacted a payment of sestertius from the vanquished. The victory marked the end of opposition against him in Africa. Thapsus subsequently became a Roman colony in the Roman provinces of Byzacena. The town's enormous harbor mole may have been begun by the local emperors , Gordian II, and Gordian III, but their reigns were too brief to have finished the work. The construction may have been abandoned partway through; Thapsus was never known as a world-class port and, after the collapse of Thysdrus in the 3rd century, all the area's maritime trade is known to have occurred through the harbors at Sullecthum, Thaenae, Leptis Parva, and Gummi.
Remains
Thapsus's surviving ruins include an
amphitheatre and various
mosaics. Thapsus was the site of one of the Roman Empire's greatest
, a huge
Roman concrete and stone breakwater extending almost a kilometer from shore; only the first hundred or so meters, however, remain above water.. In 2022, the location of a possible theatre was detected by geophysics .
Religion
In antiquity, Thapsus was a Christian
bishopric. It was probably a
suffragan but no metropolitan is known. The only known bishop was Vigilius, the author of several controversial works against the
Arianism and the
Eutychians. He was one of the Catholic bishops whom king
Hunneric of the
Vandals summoned to his court in
Carthage in 484 and then exiled.
[ Sophrone Pétridès, "Thapsus" in Catholic Encyclopedia (New York 1912)]
The Catholic Church reëstablished it in 1914 as a titular see.[ Annuario Pontificio 2013 (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013, ), p. 983] It is a Latin title of the lowest rank, with one archiepiscopal exception.
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Valentín García y Barros (1914.12.10 – 1916.08.26)
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Arturo Celestino Alvarez (1919.12.18 – 1921.05.09)
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Andrew James Louis Brennan (1923.02.23 – 1926.05.28)
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Vincenzo Celli (1927.04.08 – 1951.10.17)
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Antonio Torasso, I.M.C. (1952.01.10 – 1960.10.22)
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Paul-Émile Charbonneau (1960.11.15 – 1963.05.21)
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Tomás Enrique Márquez Gómez (1963.06.25 – 1966.11.30)
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Alfredo Cifuentes Gómez (1967.03.10 – 1970.12.02), as titular Archbishop
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Ludwig Averkamp (1973.01.18 – 1985.11.07)
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Vladas Michelevičius (1986.11.13 – 2008.11.12)
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Ignacio Carrasco de Paula (2010.09.15 – ...), president-for-life of the Pontifical Academy
Citations
Bibliography
External links
