Byrsa Hill and the Roman Forum

About

Carthage's rebuilt civic heart, planted directly on the ashes of the Punic citadel Rome had razed in 146 BCE. Augustus's engineers shaved roughly 15 meters off the hilltop and hauled away close to a quarter-million cubic meters of rubble to make room for a proper Roman forum. By 117 CE it had been running as the seat of provincial government in Africa Proconsularis for well over a century, government buildings and temples ringing the plateau.

What happened here

Business starts at first light. The magistrates' tribunal opens, cases are called, and the crowd that gathers to listen is half the point of coming. Money-changers work from tables under the porticoes, weighing coin from a dozen mints against the local rate. Notices are painted on the walls and whitewashed over when they go stale: elections, gladiator shows, a lost slave, a house to let. By the sixth hour the heat empties the open square and the arcades fill instead. Statues of the town's benefactors stand between the columns, and the men who paid for them expect to be greeted by name. Public slaves sweep at dusk. The forum is where a Roman town keeps its records, its gossip and its self-regard in the same place.

Sources

• https://www.historyhit.com/locations/byrsa-hill/
• https://www.worldhistory.org/article/2811/treasures-of-roman-tunisia/

Nearby

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Destruction of Carthage

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Roman Theatre of Carthage

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Amphitheatre of Carthage

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La Malga Cisterns

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Tophet of Carthage

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