president of Tripoli, who had presumed to pity the distress of the
province, was publicly executed at Utica; four distinguished citizens
were put to death, as the accomplices of the imaginary fraud; and the
tongues of two others were cut out, by the express order of the emperor.
Romanus, elated by impunity, and irritated by resistance, was still
continued in the military command; till the Africans were provoked, by
his avarice, to join the rebellious standard of Firmus, the Moor.

His father Nabal was one of the richest and most powerful of the Moorish
princes, who acknowledged the supremacy of Rome. But as he left, either
by his wives or concubines, a very numerous posterity, the wealthy
inheritance was eagerly disputed; and Zamma, one of his sons, was slain
in a domestic quarrel by his brother Firmus. The implacable zeal, with
which Romanus prosecuted the legal revenge of this murder, could be
ascribed only to a motive of avarice, or personal hatred; but, on this
occasion, his claims were just; his influence was weighty; and Firmus
clearly understood, that he must either present his neck to the
executioner, or appeal from the sentence of the Imperial consistory, to
his sword, and to the people. He was received as the deliverer of his
country; and, as soon as it appeared that Romanus was formidable only
to a submissive province, the tyrant of Africa became the object of
universal contempt. The ruin of Caesarea, which was plundered and burnt
by the licentious Barbarians, convinced the refractory cities of the
danger of resistance; the power of Firmus was established, at least in
the provinces of Mauritania and Numidia; and it seemed to be his only
doubt whether he should assume the diadem of a Moorish king, or the
purple of a Roman emperor. But the imprudent and unhappy Africans soon
discovered, that, in this rash insurrection, they had not sufficiently
consulted their own strength, or the abilities of their leader. Before
he could procure any certain intelligence, that the emperor of the West
had fixed the choice of a general, or that a fleet of transports was
collected at the mouth of the Rhone, he was suddenly informed that
the great Theodosius, with a small band of veterans, had landed near
Igilgilis, or Gigeri, on the African coast; and the timid usurper
sunk under the ascendant of virtue and military genius. Though Firmus
possessed arms and treasures, his despair of victory immediately reduced
him to the use of tho