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About Tunisia Tourism Historical sites
Hadrumetum |
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(sometimes called Adrametum or Adrametus) was a Phoenician colony that pre-dated Carthage and stood on the site of modern-day Sousse, Tunisia.
Ancient history
In the 9th century BC, the Phoenicians, astute Levantine maritime
traders who would later be supplanted in Northern Africa by their major
colony Carthage, sensed the possibilities of a port city south of
present-day Tunis and founded Hadrumetum on what is now the Gulf of
Hammamet in the Mediterranean Sea.
Hadrumetum was one of the most important communities within the
Carthaginian territory in northern Africa because of its strategic
location on the sea in the heart of the fertile Sahel region. The city
allied itself with Rome during the Punic Wars, thereby escaping damage
or ruin and entered a relatively peaceful 700-year stint under Pax
Romana, although Hannibal made use of it as a military base in his
campaign against Scipio Africanus at the close of the Second Punic War.
At some point during this period its name was slightly altered (by the
addition of an N) to become Hadrumentum.
Under the Roman Empire it became very prosperous; Trajan gave it the rank of a colonia: "Colonia Concordia Ulpia Trajana Augusta Frugifera Hadrumetina". A breathtaking legacy of intricate Roman mosaics survives from this era, together with many early Christiancatacombs. At the end of the 3rd century it even became the capital of the newly-made province of Byzacena (modern Sahel, Tunisia). objects from the
The city's strategic position meant that it changed hands (and
names) many times in the following centuries. In the 5th century AD it
was destroyed by the Vandals, who rebuilt it and renamed it Hunerikopolis after their king Hunerik. The following century it was taken over by Byzantium and renamed Justinianopolis (one of several homonyms is Kırşehir in modern-day Turkey). |
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