The imperial administration also faced a succession of military crises in North Africa. By 534 Moorish groups took advantage of the turmoil created by the Vandal collapse and resumed their raids on Byzacena and Numidia.94 The Byzantine response was placed in the hands of the general Solomon, after Belisarius had withdrawn to Constantinople for political reasons.95 Solomon was initially successful: he won a number of emphatic victories in Byzacena which temporally checked the Moorish threat, although Numidia proved harder to pacify. In ad 536, however, the nascent Byzantine administration in Africa imploded, as a direct result of Justinian’s religious policies. According to Procopius, there were about a thousand Arians serving in the imperial army in North Africa. These troops had previously been exempt from imperial legislation against their faith, but the new edicts included no such allowance. Arian soldiers found themselves fighting for an empire that banned them from attending church services or holding public office.96
For it was not possible for them to worship God in their usual manner, but they were excluded both from all sacraments and from all sacred rites. For the Emperor Justinian did not allow any Christian who did not espouse the orthodox faith to receive baptism or any other sacrament. But most of all they were stirred up by the feast of Easter, during which they found themselves unable to baptise their children with the sacred water or do anything else pertaining to this festival.97
These religious tensions were exacerbated by serious pay arrears and concerns about property ownership. A number of these soldiers had married the wives and daughters of the Vandals, who had not been subject to the deportation order placed on the men.98 These women had inherited the property of their former husbands and fathers, and they sought to transmit these rights of ownership to their new spouses. The imperial treasury, however, had other ideas.99 A plot was soon hatched to assassinate Solomon at the Easter ceremony in Carthage. This failed, and Solomon managed to escape to Sicily, but the mutineers assembled in the Hippodrome and attacked the prefect’s palace.
Belisarius returned to Carthage, but by the time he arrived the rebels had elected Stotzas as their new leader and had mustered a force said to have been 10,000 strong. According to Procopius, this included Byzantine deserters as well as around 1,000 Vandals, 400 of whom had managed to escape deportation to the eastern frontier.100 Belisarius drove this army back in disarray, but further mutinies were festering in Sicily and the general was forced to return there. This allowed the African mutineers time to regroup in Numidia, where their numbers were strengthened by the rebellion of the troops of the dux of Numidia. In an attempt to quell this second rising, Belisarius sent his cousin Germanus to take command of what remained of the African army. Over the next two years Germanus won several emphatic victories over the rebels until eventually Stotzas was forced to take refuge amongst the Moors in Mauretania.
The fragmentary sources make it very difficult to assess the impact that these conflicts - and the further wars of the 540s - had on the Praetorian Prefecture of Africa. Procopius refers to the heavy burden of Justinian’s new tax assessments even before the outbreak of these campaigns, and this cannot have improved as the disruptive war continued.101 The North African poet Corippus, whose long epic lohannidos celebrates the Byzantine general John Troglita and provides an unusually detailed narrative of many later episodes in these campaigns, presents a sobering picture of a ravaged landscape:
The wretched ploughmen wept as they fled, to see the enemy unyoke their cattle and drive them away, and all their houses were destroyed with all they contained. The poor were not the only victims of this disaster for they sank beneath it with the wealthy besides them. . . . On all sides, in a frenzied rage, the bandits set fire to cities and fields. Nor did the crops and trees only perish in the flames, for whatever escaped that disaster the herds consumed.102
Corippus may have exaggerated in order to accentuate the triumph of the hero of his poem, but Procopius echoes this gloomy impression. The Christian optimism which marked the initial stages of the Byzantine reconquest had dissipated after years of war:
Thus it happened that those of the Libyans who survived, few as they were in number and very impoverished, at last and after great effort found some
103
Peace.103
A large number of forts were constructed in Byzacena and Numidia in this period, both by imperial decree and under local initiative.104 Typical of these is the fortification at Ain Tounga, which overlooks the main road between Carthage and Constantina, and was probably created under Justinian and developed under his successors.105 Similar structures have been excavated across North Africa and often include barrack rooms as well as storage facilities and cisterns: clearly they were designed
Figure 9.5 The Byzantine fort at Ain Tounga. Reproduced by permission of Professor David Mattingly
To protect local populations. The fact Byzacena has the greatest number of forts which date securely from the reign of Justinian concurs with the literary testimony that it was in that province that the heaviest fighting took place.106 In many cities, moreover, forts were constructed in disused public buildings such as forums, baths, amphitheatres, theatres and pagan temples. A number of cities were also refortified with smaller, more defendable city walls.107
World History
