Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/202

186 columns and lintels of private houses, the jars for keeping oil, the stone baths, the fragments of mosaics and tablets bearing Roman inscriptions—all memorials to a life of long ago.

From certain of the inscriptions which Time and the hands of men have left unspoiled, the archaeologists have learned that Volubilus once boasted an ancient and respected family of the Caecilia gens; that once the decemvir, Marc Valerian Severus, a Carthaginian by extraction who became a high Roman dignitary, served here with glory and had a statue erected to him in the forum, in recognition of his success in obtaining from Emperor Claudius Roman privileges for the town, as well as the acknowledgment of the legality of the marriages of Roman citizens with foreigners, even though they might be barbarians. Evidently the women of these neighboring Berber tribes were far from unbeautiful, as the love affairs of the Roman warriors in Mauretania reached the ears of the divine Emperor in Rome and were one of the reasons for the ultimate downfall of the Empire.

This contact of Rome at Volubilis with the life of Africa had, in a way, some curious results, as it led to a unique admixture of the Roman religious beliefs and ceremonies with the ancient cults of Africa. The wife of Severus, Fabia Bera, came from a neighboring Berber tribe and achieved to the position of the first priestess of the town; while another priestess of note was a slave from Gallia, who had been born in Vindabone, or Vienna, and was the wife of Maternus, the chief of a regiment composed of Iberians from Galicia and Asturia. These