Leptis Magna

Assembled from 16 blocks · 2 evidence · 20 related

1. Story
2. A Punic-founded North African city that became spectacularly Roman - and produced an emperor, Septimius Severus, who reportedly spoke Latin with an African accent. Its monumental centre, largely a Severan building programme, is the clearest single argument that 'Roman' was a status one could acquire rather than an origin one had to be born into. UNESCO World Heritage ref. 183.
3. Knowledge
4. Roman Citizenship (civitas Romana)
5. Leptis Magna
6. Connections
7. Roman Citizenship (civitas Romana)
8. Carthage
9. The Roman Legion
10. The Roman Aqueduct System
11. Leptis Magna
12. Trajan (Marcus Ulpius Traianus)
13. The Antonine Constitution (Constitutio Antoniniana)
14. Evidence
15. The inscribed property covers the Punic and Roman city on the Gulf of Tunis, including the Byrsa hill, the Antonine baths, the circular military harbour and the tophet, documenting both the Punic city destroyed in 146 BCE and the Roman colonia rebuilt on the same ground.
16. Bronze certificates issued to discharged auxiliary soldiers record grants of Roman citizenship to the veteran and, in defined periods, to his children, together with the right of legal marriage. They are the hardest documentary evidence that citizenship functioned as a distributed reward mechanism tying provincial non-citizens to the imperial system through military service.