Graham, Alexander: Roman Africa: an outline of the history of the Roman occupation of North Africa ; based chiefly upon inscriptions and monumental remains in that country (London [u.a.], 1902)

82 Roman Africa

common to edifices of this kind, of which there are many
examples in Roman Africa, was a bronze cock, which, as the
quaint inscription informs us, was placed ' above the clouds and
so near to heaven that if nature had given it a voice it would
have compelled all the gods by its morning song to get up
early.'

In summo tremulas galli non diximus alas

Alitor exfrema qui ftnto nube volat,
Ciijus si membris vocem natura dedissct

Cogeret hie omnes surgere mane deos.

The monument was erected by Flavius Secundus, in honour of
his parents and other members of his family, who are fully
described in a lengthy inscription nearly covering one entire
face. In addition there are no less than ninety hexameters and
twenty elegiacs in somewhat pretentious language, in which the
charms of the city and the beauties of the neighbourhood are
set forth in a graphic manner by a local poet. What constitutes
the beauties of this remote spot, not easy of access in the present
day, is difficult to discover. The city, delightfully situated on
the verge of a plateau, and girt on three sides by the steep
banks of a river, is a mass of ruins extending in one direction
for nearly a mile and a half. The land is bare and treeless, and
human habitations, as far as the eye can compass, have long
ceased to exist. Clumps of juniper bushes clothe the sides of
the ravines, and the river that once ran freely round the city is
now a comparatively small stream, bubbling over the rocks and
soon lost in the plains, like so many of the rivers of North Africa.1
Nearly sixty years ago an intelligent traveller, who visitec
Kasrin, took special notice of this tomb of the Secundus family
and remarked that if the monuments ' still standing in a countr}
now desolate attest a former prosperity which confounds om
imagination, these verses, composed in a remote town scarceh
known in history, prove how the civilising influence of Rome
had awakened the intelligence and moral nature of a people
once numerous and wealthy, but to-day without art or literature,
or even settled inhabitants."2

1 Job vi. 15: 'My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, and as the
stream of brooks they pass away.' Also Jer. xv. iS.

2 E. Pellissier de Reynaud, Description de la R£genc$ dt Tunis (Paris, 1853).