a certain importance. The neighbouring free-towns, Thubursicum, Thagura,
were small. Madaura and Theveste, rather larger, had not perhaps the same
commercial importance. Thagaste was placed at the junction of many Roman
roads. There the little Augustin, with other children of his age, would
have a chance to admire the out-riders and equipages of the Imperial
Mail, halted before the inns of the town. What we can be sure of is that
Thagaste, then as now, was a town of passage and of traffic, a half-way
stopping-place for the southern and coast towns, as well as for those of
the Proconsulate and Numidia. And like the present Souk-Ahras, Thagaste
must have been above all a market. Bread-stuffs and Numidian wines were
bartered for the flocks of the Aures, leather, dates, and the esparto
basket-work of the regions of Sahara. The marbles of Simitthu, the
citron-wood of which they made precious tables, were doubtless handled
there. The neighbouring forests could furnish building materials to the
whole country. Thagaste was the great mart of woodland Numidia, the
warehouse and the bazaar, where to this day the nomad comes to lay in a
stock of provisions, and stares with childish delight at the fine things
produced by the inventive talent of the workers who live in towns.

Thus images of plenty and joy surrounded the cradle of Augustin. The smile
of Latin beauty welcomed him also from his earliest steps. It is true that
Thagaste was not what is called a fine city. The fragments of antiquity
which have been unearthed there are of rather inferior workmanship. But how
little is needed to give wings to the imagination of an intelligent child!
At all events, Thagaste had a bathing-hall paved with mosaics and perhaps
ornamented with statues; Augustin used to bathe there with his father.
And again, it is probable that, like the neighbouring Thubursicum and
other free-cities of the same level, it had its theatre, its forum, its
nymph-fountains, perhaps even its amphitheatre. Of all that nothing
has been found. Certain inscribed stone tablets, capitals and shafts