46). The proconsuls of the African
province had hitherto lived at Utica; in 14-13 B.C. C. Sentius
Saturninus transferred his headquarters to Carthage, which was
henceforth known as _Colonia Julia Carthago_. Several inscriptions use
this name, as also the bronze coins which bear the heads of Augustus and
Tiberius, and were struck at first in the name of the _suffetes_,
afterwards in that of _duumviri_.

Pomponius Mela and Strabo already describe Carthage as among the
greatest and most wealthy cities of the empire. Herodian puts it second
to Rome, and such is the force of tradition that the Roman citizens
resident in Carthage boasted of its Punic past, and loved to recall its
glory. Virgil in the _Aeneid_ celebrated the misfortunes of Dido, whom
the colonists ultimately identified with Tanit-Astarte; a public
Dido-cult grew up, and the citizens even pretended to have discovered
the very house from which she had watched the departure of Aeneas. The
religious character of these legends, coupled with the city's resumption
of its old role as mistress of Africa, and its independent spirit,
reawakened the old distrust, and even up to the invasions of the Vandals
the jealous rivalry of Rome forbade the reconstruction of the city
walls.

The revolt of L. Clodius Macer, legate of Numidia, in A.D. 68 was warmly
supported by Carthage, and one of the coins of this short-lived power
bears the symbol of Carthage personified. At the moment of the accession
of Vitellius, Piso, governor of the province of Africa, was in his turn
proclaimed emperor at Carthage. A little later, under Antoninus Pius, we
read of a fire which devastated the quarter of the forum; about the
same time, i.e. under Hadrian and Antoninus, there was built the famous
Zaghwan aqueduct, which poured more than seven million gallons of water
a day into the reservoirs of the Mapalia (La Malga); the cost of this
gigantic work was defrayed by a special tax which pressed heavily on the
inhabitants as late as the reign of Septimius Severus; allusions to it
are made on the coin-types of this emperor (E. Babelon, _Revista
italiana di numismatica_, 1903, p. 157).

In the early history of Christianity Carthage played an auspicious part,
in virtue of the number of its disciples, the energy and learning of
their leaders, the courage and eloquence of its teachers, the
persecutions of which it was the scene, the number of its councils and
the heresies of which it witnessed the bir