UTICA
(Utique) Tunisia.
An important site
established on a former promontory, today overlooking
an alluvial plain, Utica is accessible by a short road
leaving the village of Zana, 33 km along the route
from Tunis to Bizerta. The location of this town was
not, as it is today, in the midst of spacious lands but
on the shore at the foot of a gulf, which the Medjerda
has gradually filled up with its alluvium.
Being at the opening of a rich hinterland as well as a
port at the center of the Mediterranean, it was one of the
oldest and most celebrated Phoenician settlements. Even
when Carthage outstripped it as the metropolis of a
vast maritime empire and subsequently as the capital
of a great imperial province, Utica remained for a long
time second only to it. With the fall of Carthage in
146 B.C., Utica became the capital of the newly created
province of Africa, would become the residence of the
governor, with a garrison for Roman troops, and the
center of a strong group of Roman citizens. Both rich
and powerful, these men were called to play a crucial
role in certain episodes of the civil war which led to the
setting up of the empire. With the triumph of Caesar
and the renaissance of Carthage, Utica's role was about
to decline under the empire. In 36 B.C. it became a
municipium, enrolled in the tribe of Quirina, and a
colony under Hadrian. Already eclipsed by the preeminence of Carthage, Utica was faced with the progressive silting up of its port and consequent isolation
in the midst of marshy lands. By converting its activity
to further cultivation of its agricultural territory, it prolonged its life right up to the end of ancient times.
Utica had been endowed from the 2d c. B.C. with the
buildings essential to comfortable urban life: forum,
temples, baths, amphitheater, circus, in addition to
dwellings. Most of these structures were placed in the
grid of an orthogonal plan which covered a large part of
the city.
Adequate in the beginning, during the Republican
period, many of these buildings were replaced in the
Imperial epoch by others larger and more luxurious.
This explains the existence of two theaters for example,
the one fitted into the side of the hill, the other built in
open country. Enormous cisterns were constructed, fed
by an aqueduct. Still extant on the summit of the acropolis overlooking the town, is a quadrangular edifice
habitually referred to as “the citadel,” which could
perhaps be simply a water tower. For various reasons,
properly scientific archaeological research came very late,
between 1948 and 1958, and is now active again. Such
research has contributed a great deal to improving the
knowledge of a city of which the history had already
survived in literary texts. Monuments brought to light
in the course of recent excavation are cited below.
The great baths were established to the W at the foot
of the hill on a small eminence in the center of a depression that is often taken for a circular Punic harbor surrounding the admiral's palace. Uncovered in 1949-51 their surface covers more than 26,000 sq. m. The
rooms are symmetrically arranged according to an
axial plan.
Situated to the NE at the foot of the acropolis
is a sector excavated between 1948 and 1958. All this
part is enclosed in a city grid. The main axis is a
monumental avenue bordered with porticos supported
by an imposing colonnade on which shops open from
either side.
On the S side of this avenue a residential district was
established covering in part a Punic necropolis, which
became the object of numerous researches; some discoveries of Punic and Hellenistic objects were made
there. One complete insula (86.8 x 39.6 m) divided
into 12 lots was uncovered where six houses of unequal
size were counted—including The Treasure, The Cascade,
The Decorated Capitals, The Hunt. These dwellings,
constructed at the end of the 2d c. B.C., were long inhabited and incessantly altered and restored as the town developed and its population increased.
The House of the Cascade, the largest of this small
block, was entered through a gate with two folding
doors on the decumanus. A U-shaped corridor permitted
access to the peristyle, around which the house was built.
A large reception hall with triclinium paved in multicolor opus sectile stood between two small rooms provided with basins with fountains; on the offset side was another smaller reception hall; in the other wings were
simple chambers opening on the garden, ornamented
with a pool with a jet of water.
The House of the Hunt next to it followed the classic
plan of houses with a peristyle; it included a large garden surrounded by a portico. During alterations, several rooms were divided into two parts. Some of the floors of these rooms, belonging to different periods of the
house, were paved with mosaics. The most important—which gave its name to the house—is that of the hunt.
The House of the Historiated Capitals, adjacent on the
E to the House of the Cascade, is oblong in plan, including on only one side a peristyle square on which
opened a series of three rooms. This house included
a second-story portico with capitals as fine as those of
the main floor representing human figures. West of the
House of the Cascade, the House of the Treasure, so
named because of the finding of a coin hoard, had a
complete peristyle with triclinium with a three-part entrance. Not much of it is still extant.
On the other side, N of the great avenue, the lower
part of the town, traditionally but falsely called the
Isle, shows numerous remains. Owing to the quality
of their construction material, they have undergone an
intensive exploitation by stone robbers and have been
reduced in places to the foundations.
In 1957 a large rectangular plaza was brought to light
bordering the portico of the principal street. Its length
has not been fully uncovered. It was surrounded by a
large portico paved with marble of which there remains
only the imprint of the laying on the concrete. A very
large quantity of marble chips coming from the work
of the quarrymen and the finding of numerous statues
suggest that this was the forum—probably of the imperial epoch. The remains of a temple on a podium and
of numerous houses, large and rich but despoiled of
their decor and their materials, have also been uncovered.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
G. Ville in
RE 9 (1962) col. 1869;
A. Lézine,
Utique (1970)
PI; A. Alexander & M. Ennaifer,
Corpus des mosaiques de Tunisie, (1973).
A. ENNABLI
