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Leptis Magna

by Egenia Salza Prina Ricotti

Starting from the I cent B.C. any seaman who, after leaving Alexandria, coasted the North-Africa, knew, that at the end of this long and dangerous sail, he would see, still low on the horizon and lazily laid on the background, a luminous town all made of white marble. It was Leptis Magna, a lucky centre of commerce in the Mediterranean sea. It had been created when all around the coasts strong and rich civilizations had begun to emerge, and the Phoenicians, excellent seamen and even better merchants, had begun to build their “emporia”. Leptis was one of those “emporia” and very soon the caravans from Central Africa began to converge there: long lines of camels with their loads of precious goods, articles that the shrewd merchants didn’t have any difficulty to sell to the people of the European area. Here very refined populations as, for example, the Etruscans, had appeared: people who didn’t stint over the prices and who wanted those luxurious objects to adorn their houses and their temples. Thus the Phoenicians, with their boats loaded with goods so valuable that it was worthwhile to risk seamen and ships for the high sums they would cash at the end, were always sailing to and fro’ across the Mediterranean sea.
The nucleus of what later on would become Leptis Magna was created around the VII-VI cent. B.C. Its location had been well studied and carefully chosen by those excellent sailors who were the Phoenicians. These seanen navigated with the wind that blew up their only sail, a square piece of cloth, the few oars that were aboard were used only when they had to move about in a harbour or when they found themselves caught in some deadly lulls. For all these reasons their frail crafts didn’t dare to confront the open sea and they sailed always in view of the coast and sropped where they could stock up their larder with food and particularly water. Besides staying near the shore offered them the possibility to find refuges in case of a sudden tempest. In those occasions being near it they could immediately reach the shore, and, after having hauled the ships on land, they could calmly wait for the fury of the elements to subside.
The Phoenicians had chosen Leptis as one of their emporia because its landing place was a good shelter, but, more than this, because the location of this town, set on the border of a waterless desert, made it an indispensable halting place for the ships which sailed from Alexandria to Carthages. Mile after mile those crafts coasted arid and uninhabited lands, the terrible Sirtis as they were called in ancient times. Here for days and days they only saw expanses of red desert sands and from time to time the blinding white of the “Sepke”, stretches of pure salt. Water could never be found in this region, and to navigate along this flat shore was really a nightmare. The poor men were always afraid that Aeolus could fail them and without the wind they would never be able to row the ship to safety. Thus we can easily imagine their relief when they would see the wide estuary that the uadi Lebda had hollowed in the coast. Some rocks quite near the shore broke the first fury of the waves, while the landing place, swept by appropriate sea currents offered the necessary depth for the “oneraria” ships of those times which with a tonnage varying from 25-30 tons to a maximum of 160 (exceptional cases) when fully loaded had a medium draft of 1-1.50 m. It was at this landing places that for many centuries the merchant ships cast their anchors, bought fresh food and filled with water their “dolia”.
We can now imagine how this nucleus of a future town would have looked at its beginning: a large dusty space of the red and impalpable desert sand, and all around it a fringe of palms. Under them a row of simple houses for the “emporium’s” people; small huts made with “tim”, a special kind of local earth pressed in moulds to make their walls. At the centre of this rudimental square were a pair of wells and a large drinking trough to water the caravans’ camels. Later on at Leptis arrived a group of Greek immigrants, shrewd people who helped to develop activities and trades. The ideal nucleus of this emporium was then complete. So began the history of this town which would became a white marble miracle.
Centuries elapsed and, while the Punic consolidated their power on a great part of the North Africa, Leptis continued to thrive. Not even the ruins of the Punic wars and the advent of the Romans had much influence on its economy. Of course the town was punished by the winners, it was fined and down-classed from the status of “civitas foederata” (allied) to “stipendaria”, (tributary), but the ties between Romans and Leptitans held on: the Leptitans had lots of goods to sell, and the Romans were excellent buyers. Besides roman citizens interested in those trades came to Leptis and settled there. Among these there was known people as the “argentarius” Erennius, whom we find cited in Cicero’s letters, an enterprising banker who organized the traffic of merchandises between the African and the Sicilian coasts. Thus between the I cent. B.C. and the I cent. A.D., despite all those troubled times and the wars through which the Romans conquered a large part of the known world, Leptis continued to have a great expansion and a very rich period.
At these times the prosperous trades augmented enormously the richness of some Leptitan ship-owners whose crafts were always loaded with all kinds of precious goods transported by the caravans which, as Plinius tell us, brought ivory, gems, animals’ hides, negro slaves and wild beasts for the arenas. Meanwhile on the coast the fishing boats made large catches and with them the industry for preserving those fishes prospered: tuna was salted and garum was made and sold well. Moreover all around the town the landowners’ estates produced large crops. In the uidian’s we still find dams and the ample basins which were built to collect all the water that from time to time, after some heavy rains, would flow in their dry beds. Nearby we still see the ruins of their farms and of the many mills where olive oil was pressed. In short all the land around the town prospered, but the basis of Leptis riches came from their simple but very efficient landing place which during all the I cent, B.C. and a good part of the I A.D. was in full activity.
We need only to examine the town development to account for its wealthy standing, because in parallel to he augment of its richness, the prosperous trades influenced also the growth of the town. Everywhere one could find monuments and buildings with which the local patrons embellished their town and ingratiated themselves with their fellow citizens. There is no doubt that in this period a flourishing private building trade was developed, the kind of private building trade which always reflect the healthy economy of a country.
We can see that as long as everything is going well rich citizens spend, invest, and give works and welfare to poor people, but as soon the town’s economy get in a crisis, whether for lack of ready money or when, finding new investments they are trying to save their situation, those patrons withdraw from their bounties. Of course at this moment, doing it more or less efficiently, but certainly with less enthusiasm, the state is obliged to step in and help the part of the population which usually earned their living in the building trade.
Studying Leptis’ town- planning we find just this kind of phenomenon. For all the time elapsed between the I cent B.C. to the end of Nero’s reign the private building trade financed by the Leptis’ wealthiest patrons, all of them of Punic descent, flourished. It was in this period that Iddibal ben Caphada, of whom we have a splendid portrait, built the “Calcidico” a portico limiting a large square whose function is still discussed: trade place, market of clothes and woollen fabrics and so on. In the meantime a contemporary of Caphada, Annobal Tapapius Rufus son of Himilco, gave to his fellow-citizens a splendid theatre and to this he added one of the finest market place of those times. Even its stalls and particularly the fishmongers’ ones where extremely elegant: more apt to a jewellery show, than to a display of mullets and sea-basses.
Others wealthy Leptitans financed the building of temples as Suphunibal daughter of Hannobal who, on top of the theatre’s “cavea”, built one of them for “Cerere Augusta” while in the peristyle at the back of the theatre’s Iddibal Tapapius son of Magon erected a temple dedicated to the Augustan Gods.
At the same time the state limited its interventions to some marble triumph arches and to an amphitheatre created at Nero’s times under the proconsul Taberius Flavinus. It was quite an impressive monument which, built as it was in the large hollow left by a huge quarry, instead of rising high on the ground, as all the others roman amphitheatres did, sank in the bowels of the earth. Today it is really remarkable the impression made on visitors who, following the sign-boards and not seeing anything, try, surprised, to discover it, high on the plain fragrant of oregano. Then, when they are still looking around, the arena opens wide under their feet and they find themselves over the highest step of its cavea. Here they stops looking at the empty space and feeling giddy. A splendid amphitheatre, certainly, but not an economically important intervention.
The time elapsed, and, after a period of frantic activity at the end of the I cent A.D everything stood still. Starting from then all the wealthy ship-owners and merchants, who up to this moment had done everything to enrich and embellish their town, lost their interest in it. Thus around the end of the I cent. A.D. the state intervention stepped in building at the landing place two temples.
Later on Hadrian helped Leptis’ building trade by the construction of the Great Baths, a monument all revetted by white marble and adorned with all kind of statues, among which one particularly beautiful of Antinoos. It certainly was an impressive building, yet, compared to all that had been made in the preceding centuries, it was a minor intervention. Unfortunately now the rich Leptis’ private citizens had retracted from their munificence. At Hadrian’s times the only one we find was a certain Candidus who provided the Baths’ hydric supply, and who, as we can easily find reading the list of his ancestors’ names, was in reality a Punic with a romanised name.
But Candidus was a swallow that didn’t make springtime. At Leptis now there was only state’s interventions, and they were not so many. After the bounties and the activities of the I cent B.C. and of the I A.D., the town fell in a kind of torpor: there were problems with its landing place and its economy sagged.. As we have seen Leptis’ landing place had been the origin of richness and, also if it was a simple inlet created by the “uadi” and protected by a row of natural rocks which served as breakwaters, it had worked very well In it there also was a large tract of beach where in winter time or in a tempest it was possible to haul the merchant ships or again land them when they needed to be caulked and repaired. A simple landing certainly, but it had been the fortune o this North African town. It was not Alexandria’s harbour with its towering light-house, but as we have seen it had worked well.
Its placid and serene life was abruptly compromised by an inexperienced attempt to improve the landing place. Probably some proconsul of Nero’s time thought that he could better protect the ships from the fury of the waves, by building a groyne to close the western extremity of the cove. Unfortunately he didn’t realise that this groyne barred just the uadi’s outing. As a matter of fact now, every time that this torrent rose, it deposited tons of the desert red sand and silt against the bar. But the proconsul didn’t confine his attempts to the groyne and thinking to make a kind of lake which, in his mind, would have allowed the ships to stay anchored during any tempest he decided to unite the most eastern rocks to the land. The result of this intervention was to exclude from the basin the beneficial eastern currents which for centuries had swept the landing places and took from it the sands which heaped up in it. After all those transformations the only current to enter in this kind of harbour was the northern one which brought with it lots of sand and deposited it in the basin. Thus the bottom of the landing place began to rise and month after month, year after year the landing place couldn’t be used any more.
Obviously it took some time for it to be completely ruined but at the end of the century the harbour and the life of Leptis were both compromised and the rich ship owners had to find some remedy. Probably many of them had their estates on the coast and the ones who didn’t have any could very soon buy one. Thus during the II cent. A.D. at both sides of Leptis rose a row of splendid maritime villas, with gorgeous mosaics floor, luxurious baths and everything that was necessary to lead a pleasant life, but above all they had good landing places. The best area to implant them was on the west of Leptis shore, an indented coast with high rocky promontories between which white and sandy beaches, the “marse”, stretched itself. The promontories were ideal because thus mooring on one or the other side of them the ships would always be alee. Moreover in winter time or in case of a tempest the ships could be hauled on the “marse”. Thus little by little all the wealthy citizens of Leptis built their country mansions and left the town, which already hit by the silted up harbour saw the diminishment of the money and of the taxes paid by its wealthiest contributors.


Bibliography

Scientific populartion
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Dossier Leptis Magna, la città delle ombre bianche in Archeo (Anno X, nº 9 (127)) September 1995, pp. 50-91

Scientific papers
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI - Le Ville di Silin in RPAA Vol. XLIII, 1970-1971, pp.135-163
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI - Ville Marittime e residenziali del Nord Africa in Colloquii del Sodalizio - nº 2 - 1968-1970, pp. 21-32, tavv. I-III.
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI - I porti della zona di Leptis Magna in Rend. Pont. Acc. Rom. di Arch., Vol. XLV, 1972-1973, pp.75-103, Plates and figg..