Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/145

 with all the usual components of a great capital in this age; a spacious forum lined with porticoes, colonnaded streets, and public buildings suited to the needs of the governing class. The latter occupied the citadel, a lofty mound centrally situated, the transformed Punic Byrsa. As special features the main thoroughfares were shaded by rows of trees, and a remarkable street was devoted solely to the trade of the money-changers and silversmiths. Spacious halls for the accommodation of professors of the liberal arts and philosophers, churches, public baths, theatres, a hippodrome, and a substantially constructed aqueduct more than fifty miles long, completed the equipment of the African capital. A remnant of jealous apprehension, inherited by successive generations of Romans, decreed that Carthage should remain without walls, and only in the first quarter of the fifth century was the defect supplied by the younger Theodosius. Soon after the establishment of the Empire Africa became the granary of Italy, and, as later Constantinople was dependent on Alexandria, the arrival in the