Phoenician colony In the 9th centuryBC,
Tyrians established Hadrumetum as a trading post and waypoint along their trade routes to
Italy and the
Strait of Gibraltar. Its establishment preceded
Carthage's but, like other western
Phoenician colonies, it became part of the
Carthaginian Empire following 's
long siege of Tyre in the 580s and 570sBC.
Carthaginian city are similar to the
Carthaginian tombstones Agathocles of Syracuse captured the town in 310BC during the
Seventh Sicilian War, as part of his failed attempt to move the conflict to Africa. Hadrumetum later provided refuge to
Hannibal and other Carthaginian survivors after their
202BC defeat at Zama, which decided the outcome of the
Second Punic War. The total length of the Punic fortifications was apparently ; some ruins survive.
Roman city During the
Third Punic War, the government of Hadrumetum supported the
Romans against Carthage and, after
Carthage's destruction in 146BC, it received additional territory and
the status of a free city in thanks. During this period, it chose its own
shufets () and minted its own
bronze coins with the head of "
Neptune" or the Sun. During the
civil war between
Pompey and
Julius Caesar,
G. Considius Longus secured Hadrumetum for the
Optimates with forces equivalent to two
legions. Despite being reinforced by
Gn. Calpurnius Piso's
Berber cavalry and footmen from
Clupea, however, he was obliged to allow Caesar to land nearby on 28 December 47BC. According to
Suetonius, this landing was the occasion of the famously deft recovery, when Caesar tripped while coming ashore but dealt with the poor
omen by grabbing handfuls of dirt and proclaiming "I have you now, Africa!" () Caesar's attempts to negotiate with Longus were rejected but the campaign subsequently led to
his victory over
Metellus Scipio and
Juba at
Thapsus, after which Longus was killed by his own men for the money he was carrying and the town went over to Caesar. ruins at Hadrumetum Hadrumetum was one of the most important communities in
Roman North Africa because of the fertility of its hinterland (modern Tunisia's
Sahel), which made it an important source of
Rome's grain supply. It quarreled with its neighbor
Thysdrus over the temple of a goddess
equated to Minerva, which stood on their shared border. Under
Augustus, Hadrumetum's coins bore his face
obverse and the name (and often face) of Africa's proconsul
reverse; after Augustus, the mint was closed. Hadrumetum revolted while
Vespasian was
proconsul of
Africa. It nonetheless continued to prosper;
Trajan gave it the rank of a
Roman colony, giving its residents
Roman citizenship. It was
conquered by the
Umayyad Caliphate in the 7th century. The ruins of Hadrumetum stood in the village of Hammeim, which grew up to include them in its outskirts. Under
colonial rule, the French engineer A. Daux rediscovered the
jetties and
moles of the Roman town's commercial harbor and the line of its military harbor; both had been mostly artificial and have
silted up since antiquity.
Louis Carton and AbbéLeynaud rediscovered the
Christian catacombs in 1904; the tunnels extend for miles through small subterranean galleries filled with Roman and Byzantine
sarcophagi and inscriptions. ==Ruins==