The Beggar of Volubilis: Historical Background

The historical background to
The Beggar of Volubilis

‘Africam Graeci Libyam appellavere…’ The Greeks call Africa Libya…

So begins the fifth scroll of Pliny’s Natural History.

In the first century AD, the fertile coastal region of North Africa was part of the great Roman Empire. This region was often called ‘Rome’s breadbasket’, because of the great quantities of wheat grown here and then shipped to Rome. The wheat needed to be shipped to Rome, and so several port towns sprang up. These were usually built according to the Roman layout and would have seemed quite familiar to a Roman traveler.

Sabratha, for example, was a port town about the same size and shape as Ostia. Its wild beast importers had their own office in Ostia’s famous Forum of the Corporations (with a mosaic of an elephant as their trademark.) If you visit Sabratha today, you can still see the forum with its Capitolium and basilica, very much like Ostia’s. You can also see ruins of a massive sandstone temple to the Egyptian goddess Isis, as well as a reconstructed Roman theatre, with an imposing three-story scaena.

Even Volubilis, one of the furthest outposts of the Roman Empire and several hundred miles inland, would have felt Roman. In the first century BC, Volubilis was one of the capitals of King Juba’s client kingdom of Mauretania.

The part of Africa which would have seemed exotic to a Roman was the great inland desert. Then as now, the Sahara spread over a great area of North Africa. But in Roman times much of the Sahara was savannah, providing habitat for exotic animals like giraffe, zebra, antelope and lions. Catching game for the arena was a huge industry in the first century AD, and the Romans hunted these wild animals virtually to extinction.

Pantomime in Roman times was nothing like modern pantomime. The pantomime dancer of Roman times wore a mask and danced the actions of a story, which was sung by a singer and accompanied by music.

The Sahara on pantomime Strabo on Libya a Roman theatre