ROME IN AFRICA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20151, 21 May 1928, Page 6

ROME IN AFRICA

'pHE work of Italy in her African colony of Tripoli is bringing to light the Roman Empire. It is an odd example of the changes of a country’s fortunes that until, in modern times, North Africa became a tourists’ pleasure-ground, the world had forgotten it was once a treasury, a granary, a school of civilisation and religion for all mankind. Race after race has coveted, conquered, and thriven on that African seaboard—Greek colonists, Phoenician traders, the Roman power—and now, after the Jong eclipse of barbarian invasions and Arab rule, Europe is at work there again. After some eight years of excavation Professor Pietro Romanelli has laid bare much of the ancient city of Leptis, one of the three “poleis” from which Tripoli has its name. It has proved something less rich in works of art than the Greek Gyrene, but of high interest in the study of Roman life and administration. From Leptis came one of the greatest emperors of the later years of Rome, Septimius Severus. It should help to a better conception of what the Roman Empire was to remember that its supreme ruler might well be born of the remote province and the uncertain race of Tripoli. Out of the sands of Eeptis the Italian professor has dug many inscriptions of the deeds of Severus and the palace which he built. England may claim particular interest in the discovery, for if Severus was born in Tripoli he died at York. A rebellion brought him there; he established the Roman peace in the South, and was tempted, like other conquerors, into Caledonia. There he met disaster, and, emerging with heavy loss of his legionaries, put up some sort of a rampart to protect the southerners against the wild Caledonians, and died. England may well pay homage to the revealed basilica of Lucius Septimius Severus in the Tripolitan sands, and acknowledge the sommon debt to Rome.