City
Capsa Colonia
Gafsa · قفصة
Listen to the story
Capsa Colonia is the oasis town of Gafsa in southern Tunisia, a fertile, well-watered spot in the middle of the desert. The Roman historian Sallust tells that legend credited its founding to a Libyan Hercules. King Jugurtha kept his treasure behind its strong walls, so Marius took and destroyed the town in 106 BC. Rebuilt under the emperors, it was first governed by sufetes, magistrates of the old Carthaginian kind, became a municipium probably under Trajan, and finally a Roman colony, the rank the map records in its name. Its handsome Roman spring basins still survive in the town.