provinces include the following: Burj es-Sab
c, where the inscription recording the construction of a tower by a cleric named Symeon, in 572, also includes the name of the emperor Justin II, suggesting that the tower served as an official garrison post;32 Jebel Hass, where the layout of
the 91 '
IIL5defences built by the bishop Stephen gives the impression of an official fort;33 and Ombos,
where although it was the bishop who initiated the rebuilding of a hostelrey for visiting soldiers and officials, the work was done by the men of the town garrison. 3^
There would therefore seem to be nothing unusual about the bishop Theueste taking in hand the construction of a tower or fortlet in the sixth century. The question remains, however, whether it was a residential building, a refuge or watch-tower, or an official garrison post.
Without examining, and preferably excavating, the structural remains of the tower, the problem is difficult to resolve. The first possibility can probably be discounted, since the bishop is unlikely to have required a private residence of such a type so far from the city. The other two possibilities, however, seem equally plausible.
For the bishop to have built a refuge tower for the inhabitants of a town or village, perhaps
even the workers of his estate, would have been a perfectly normal thing for him to have done.
On the other hand, it would be equally plausible for him to have been responsible for the
construction of a tower in which a detachment of troops from the military base at Theueste could have been stationed; their purpose could have been to patrol one of the principal routes leading south from the city. If the fortlet was an official garrison post it could have been paid for by the bishop as an act of munificence or in lieu of taxation, in the manner already suggested for Ain el-Ksar. 35 Alternatively, like Saint Saba, the
bishop may simply have been an intermediary, handling money made available for the
construction work by the emperor through the praetorian prefect. **"
In case this last explanation seem
implausible, given that the inscription states that the bishop paid for the tower ex sumptu proprio, two examples may be cited from Syria to
illustrate the point that building inscriptions of this type often disguise the source from which the finances for the works were ultimately
derived. At Androna, the massive barracks that were built in 558/559 were provided, so the
inscription associated with them would have the reader believe, through the munificence of
Thomas, a native of the town, who is also
recorded elsewhere at Androna as the donor of a bath building.**' These barracks, however,
were clearly intended exclusively for military use. 3° Whatever Thomas' s role in their
construction may have been, it seems likely that the state, and probably the emperor himself, was also directly involved. In the second example, from Kerratin et-Tugga TapoutCa lji7i:6poov ), one inscription records the generosity of a certain John, who in 510/511 unparsimoniously disbursed the gold necessary for the construction of a tower, intended to serve as a refuge for the inhabitants of his home town;
a second inscription, however, lets slip the information that the funds which John made available were not his own but the emperor's.
Whether John was an imperial official, a local magistrate or perhaps even a priest serving as intermediary is unknown. 39 Such examples show, however, that inscriptions which purport to record acts of munificence by private
individuals should not necessarily be taken at their face value.
In view of this observation, the
interpretation of a text from Henchir Zaaba, between Theueste and Thelepte, which
records the restoration of a cas(trum) by two individuals, Samus and Victor, most probably during the
III. 5
Byzantine period, may not be as straightforward 92 as it appears at first sight; and the fact that the inscription was found in the ruins of a Christian
church does not make it any easier. 40 A text from Limisa, however, records the construction of a turris by three brothers, Maximian,
Stephen and Mellosus.41 Whether the
inscription relates, as argued elsewhere, 42 to the quadriburgium that still stands at Limisa (either to the whole structure or to one of its towers) or to an independent structure that has not been identified is irrelevant to the present argument, since the mention by name of the emperor Maurice, the exarch Gennadius and the prefect John shows that the work was in any
case an official one. The role of the three brothers was evidently financial. The most plausible explanation is that they paid for the fort as part of their fiscal requirement. 43
Whether Limisa had city status in the sixth century is not known. Towns provided with town walls, however, would probably have had to contribute if not to their construction then at least to their upkeep.44 At Heliopolis (Baalbek), for example, an inscription of 635/636 records the construction of a tower forming part of the town wall by the inhabitants of the Macedonian quarter of the town. 45 The only comparable evidence from the African prefecture is from Caralis in Sardinia, where Gregory the Great instructed the bishop to take responsibility for the guard and repair of the walls.46 By the sixth century, the actual work of building was usually performed by paid labourers rather than by corvees.47 At Carthage in 533, for example, Belisarius 'offered great sums of money to the artisans engaged in the building trade and to the general throng of workmen', and by this means repaired the city walls within the space of three months. 48 At Ai'n el-Ksar, an inscription states that the physical work in building the castrum was done by the citizens of the place, de suis propriis laboribus.49 it has already
been argued, however, that these citizens were the local limitanei, and if they carried out the building with their own hands this would
doubtless have been part of their required military duties. 50
Some form of communal enterprise in building town walls may be observed at Had rumen turn and Sullectum during the Vandal period; and at Sullectum the priest appears to have assumed a leading role in the deputation which handed over the key of the town gate to Belisarius's bucellarius Boriades in 533.51 jjow
far t Self-help' of this kind may have continued to be practiced under Byzantine rule is uncertain, however, since without imperial authority it was in theory illegal to build town walls. 52 The vast majority of the rather crudely built late Roman or early medieval defensive enceintes and fortlets that survive in Africa, often including Roman spolia in their masonry, are undated. 53 Some maybe sixth- or seventh-century; but it would be misguided to assume that the majority were or that they were all unofficial works, erected by local populations for their own protection
independent of official control. The distinction between official and unofficial fortifications
needs to be carefully defined, even if it proves difficult to apply in practice. 54 Official
fortifications would have included all those built with state finances or by individuals fulfilling an obligation to the state; they would have
comprised structures designed to hold a
garrison, as well as a number of others intended to serve simply as refuges for local communities.
Unofficial fortifications would have included private residences, either towers or villas,
III. 5 93
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CDDCD CD
3
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V -hi 3
and perhaps some refuges or watch-towers built 3
by landlords for the protection of their own
estate workers. Fortifications not falling into any of these categories would have been not only unofficial but also probably illegal; if any could be shown to have existed in sixth-century Byzantine Africa, they would betoken in effect a lapse of the state's control of one aspect of
provincial government over which it expected to exercise a monopoly.
6. Strategy and the siting of fortifications (1).
General principles
Diehl's analysis of the siting of fortifications in Byzantine Africa has long dominated historians' ideas concerning the sixth-century defensive system of the prefecture. ■*■ Diehl rightly drew a contrast between the Byzantine military strategy of the sixth century and the system of defences which the Romans had operated in Africa before the Vandal conquest, and which had been analysed, a few years before the appearance of Diehl's own study, by Cagnat in the first edition of L'Armee romaine d' Afrique (1893). Whereas Cagnat had portrayed Africa as defended in the Roman period by a heavily fortified frontier zone (limes), comprising
myriads of small forts, backed up in places by larger forts and fortresses, all of which had had the effect of cutting off the pacified and
otherwise undefended parts of the diocese from the marauding desert nomads, by the sixth
century, argued Diehl, conditions had changed.
A weaker and less mobile army, whose
commanders were under orders to avoid combat as far as possible, proved unable to bar the
frontier to invaders; furthermore, the
weakness of the preceding Vandal regime had permitted those Moors who had previously lived at peace within the borders of Roman Africa to reassert their independence and begin raiding near-by Roman settlements. To deal with
disturbances initiated from both outside and inside the frontier line, a different defensive system therefore had to be adopted. ^
According to Diehl, this was done in the following manner. First of all, the Roman
frontier was reinstated, though its line now lay in part somewhat north of that followed earlier. 3 It was laid out in a manner which Diehl regarded as typical of all sixth-century frontier systems, with more than one line of defence. Following the evidence of contemporary military treatises and examples taken from de Aedificiis, both of
which however relate specifically to the eastern provinces and in particular to Persarmenia and the Danube, Diehl argued that the outer line of defence in Africa would have consisted of a
string of fortified towns, interspersed with forts, all of them well fortified and provisioned, and garrisoned by small detachments of
troons-;ction f
ncial
stem
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