inal
home, a new state grew up by their side. The northern coast of Africa
has been inhabited from time immemorial, and is inhabited still, by
the people, who themselves assume the name of Shilah or Tamazigt, whom
the Greeks and Romans call Nomades or Numidians, i. e. the "pastoral"
people, and the Arabs call Berbers, although they also at times
designate them as "shepherds" (Shawie), and to whom we are wont to
give the name of Berbers or Kabyles. This people is, so far as its
language has been hitherto investigated, related to no other known
nation. In the Carthaginian period these tribes, with the exception
of those dwelling immediately around Carthage or immediately on the
coast, had on the whole maintained their independence, and had also
substantially retained their pastoral and equestrian life, such as the
inhabitants of the Atlas lead at the present day; although they were
not strangers to the Phoenician alphabet and Phoenician civilization
generally,(2) and instances occurred in which the Berber sheiks had
their sons educated in Carthage and intermarried with the families of
the Phoenician nobility. It was not the policy of the Romans to have
direct possessions of their own in Africa; they preferred to rear a
state there, which should not be of sufficient importance to be able
to dispense with Roman protection, and yet should be sufficiently
strong to keep down the power of Carthage now that it was restricted
to Africa, and to render all freedom of movement impossible for the
tortured city. They found what they sought among the native princes.
About the time of the Hannibalic war the natives of North Africa were
subject to three principal kings, each of whom, according to the
custom there, had a multitude of princes bound to follow his banner;
Bocchar king of the Mauri, who ruled from the Atlantic Ocean to the
river Molochath (now Mluia, on the boundary between Morocco and the
French territory); Syphax king of the Massaesyli, who ruled from the
last-named point to the "Perforated Promontory," as it was called
(Seba Rus, between Jijeli and Bona), in what are now the provinces of
Oran and Algiers; and Massinissa king of the Massyli, who ruled from
the Tretum Promontorium to the boundary of Carthage, in what is now
the province of Constantine. The most powerful of these, Syphax king
of Siga, had been vanquished in the last war between Rome and Carthage
and carried away captive to Rome, where he died in captivi