Was There a Regular Provincia Africa in the Second Century? (English)

claims that Aemilianus dedicated the site of Carthage to the gods, while the Agrarian Law of 111 confirms that the place had some special character which it leaves obscure.1 Strabo (17.3.16) names four destroyed towns, all near Carthage or on the Cape Bon peninsula. [...]several clauses (lines 77, 78 and 80) mention stipendiarii, who were liable to the payment of tribute, and their lands. Stipendiary communities must have been concentrated in the interior among those towns and villages that earlier had paid tribute to Carthage.3 The chief African beneficiaries were Micipsa, Gulassa, and Mastanabal, sons of the Numidian king Masinissa, who had jointly inherited the kingdom on their father's death during the war. According to Pliny (HN 5.2.25), Aemilianus and the kings marked a boundary ditch, which came to be called "royal" (fossa regia). The ditch confirmed for Masinissa's heirs possession of the Magni Campi, the pagus Thuscus, and at least a portion of the Emporia district, just the regions where territorial disputes had provided the pretext for the Roman declaration of war.4 Appian (Lib. 135) ends his account of the settlement with the observation that "it was decreed that a yearly praetor (strategos) be sent from Rome to govern the country." [...]scholars generally accept that Africa became a permanent magisterial assignment in 146, joining Sicily, Sardinia, and Nearer and Farther Spain, the latest of which was formed over half a century earlier.5 II: