Numidia: the Berber kingdom whose horsemen helped Rome break Carthage
Two rival Berber states once split the land that is now northern Algeria. Then a Carthage-educated prince named Masinissa switched sides, fought guerrilla-style in the mountains, and helped Rome win the Second Punic War. His reward was a united Numidia, and his relentless land grabs set the stage for Carthage's destruction.
Before unification the country was divided between the Massylii in the east, ruling from Cirta, and the Masaesyli in the west, ruling from Siga. The Moulouya River marked its western edge, the Mediterranean its northern one, and the south faded into Saharan country held by the Gaetulians. Greek writers called the inhabitants nomads, which Latin turned into Numidae, though the historian Gabriel Camps argued the name has a local African root. Polybius singled out the speed and flexibility of Numidian cavalry during the First Punic War of 264–241 BC.
Kingship grew from several pressures. Iron tools and a rising population let the land feed more people and made society more unequal, and in the early third century BC warriors traded chariots for horses, letting chiefs command far wider territory. Carthage mattered too: Numidians served in its armies, and Zelalsan, forebear of the Massylian royal line around 250 BC, carried the Phoenician title sufet.
When the Second Punic War began, the Massylii king Gala sided with Carthage and the Masaesyli ruler Syphax with Rome. Gala's son Masinissa helped defeat Syphax twice by 213 BC and campaigned in Spain under Hasdrubal Barca, but after his father died Carthage seized the family's lands and he went over to Rome. Syphax, now married to Hasdrubal's daughter Sophonisba, beat him twice in 205 BC, driving him into the hills. Once Scipio Africanus landed in 204 BC, Masinissa helped win the Battle of Cirta in 203 BC; Sophonisba took poison rather than be handed over, and Scipio proclaimed him king of all Numidia, honouring him with a gold crown and ivory sceptre. Rome's win at Zama followed in 202 BC.
Masinissa then kept nibbling at Carthage. By 158 BC he held Lepcis Magna and the Tripolitanian coast, encircling the city on land. In 151 BC he invaded with 52,000 men, and his son Gulussa routed Hasdrubal's 30,000 in 150 BC. Carthage's resistance broke its 201 BC treaty, and Rome razed the city in 146 BC under Scipio Aemilianus. Numidia itself prospered under Masinissa and Micipsa, exporting grain and adopting Hellenistic diadems on its coins.
Source: Numidia
