City
Ipponte diarito
Bizerte · بنزرت
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Hippo Diarrhytus lay on the coast of Africa Proconsularis, where Bizerte in Tunisia stands now. Its Greek epithet means 'flowed through', which the Roman writer Pliny explained by the waters that irrigated the land; the town also suffered frequent floods. It began as a Phoenician colony from Tyre, was strongly fortified by Agathocles of Syracuse and given a better harbour, and was later a sheltered port where a lagoon was joined to the sea through a cut in a narrow neck of land. Destroyed along with Carthage, it flourished again as a Roman colony, and bishops are recorded here until the seventh century.