Numidia

The province of Numidia in the Roman Empire.

Numidia (202 - 46 BC) was an ancient African Berber kingdom now extinct. It extended into what is now Algeria and part of Tunisia (North Africa) which later alternated between being a Roman province and being a Roman vassal state. It lay on the eastern border of what is now Algeria, bordered by the Roman province of Mauritania (in modern Algeria and Morocco) to the west, the Roman province of Africa (modern Tunisia) to the east, the Mediterranean Sea to the north, and the Sahara desert to the south. Its inhabitants were the Numidians.

History

Numidia Nova was only a small part of the country to which the Romans originally gave this name, and it extended from the limits of the territory of Carthage to the Malva River, corresponding to the north of what is currently Algeria. It was divided into a multitude of towns with independent chiefs, the most notable being the Masilios and Massesilos. The root *masi- that appears in various ethnonyms and Numidian proper names is related to the appellation amazigh.

Numidia was initially subjected to the Carthaginians and was later occupied by Agathocles, tyrant of Syracuse, who evacuated shortly after. The sovereigns of the country had their court on the one hand in the west, in Siga, and on the other in Zama. The oldest prince, named Narva, was married to a sister of Hannibal, and his son Gaia (who was the father of Masinissa) reigned at the time of the Second Punic War.