Armed resistance to Roman rule in North Africa, from the time of Augustus to the vandal invasion

It is difficult now to determine how much resistance there was to Roman rule in North Africa because of the almost complete absence of evidence for the sentiments of the region’s non-Roman population. A small number of so-called ‘Libyan’ inscriptions survive on stone, but the texts, where they can be deciphered, reveal little. Armed resistance to Roman rule seems to have been sporadic and mostly small-scale, at least in the period before about 250 CE. The most significant threat to the region’s security was the rebellion of the Musulamii led by Tacfarinas, which began in 17 CE and lasted until 24. But Roman rule itself was not seriously threatened, because Tacfarinas could not defeat the Romans in battle. After the death of Tacfarinas, resistance to Roman rule appears to have been centered in the highlands of what is now north-western Algeria. The Roman army, which functioned primarily as an internal security force in north Africa, seems to have had trouble monitoring, and therefore controlling, the tribal peoples who lived in the mountains, and, to a lesser extent, the transhumant, semi-nomadic populations of the region, who moved their flocks and herds north in the summer and south in the winter.