 a leader who realistically had very little authority. Insurgency ensued throughout the province.
For all the above reasons, open hostilities broke out between the Berbers and Rome across Northern Africa. Powerful tribes such as the Musulamii, Mauri and Cinithii united in common purpose. Their unity was down to one man.
Tacfarinas, by Roman standards, was the lowest of the low. He was a former auxiliary soldier turned deserter. Bu to the Berbers he was the leader of the resistance.
Having deserted the Roman army, Tacfarinas returned to his native Musulamii tribe and became one of its chiefs. His knowledge of how the Romans trained and fought was invaluable. Indeed, Tacfarinas even armed some of his soldiers in the heavier Roman manner.
Despite the introduction of these ‘Roman’ units, Tacfarinas realised that his troops could not rival Rome in open battle. He learned this the hard way. Yet the threat he posed to Rome remained serious. Following defeat, these tribes resumed a devastating tactic comprised of raiding, looting and harassing their enemy; guerrilla warfare.
The result of such warfare was devastating: panic and insecurity seized the African provinces. Common people were now in the front line of the war, and at any time their land could be raided and their livelihoods left in tatters.
Roman soldiers were simply not used to such unconventional fighting and suffered heavy losses as a result. Their morale plummeted. To counter the problem, Roman commanders reintroduced decimation.
This was one of Rome’s most severe punishments for poor performing soldiers, where every tenth man of a certain unit was beaten to death by his comrades. The implementation of such a rare and drastic measure to restore discipline shows the serious threat Tacfarinas and his rebels posed.
Down but not out
Finally, in 22AD, the Romans hounded the tribes away from guerrilla tactics and forced them into battle. A decisive Roman victory followed and war, at last, looked to be over. Tacfarinas had other ideas. This desert hydra escaped to the fringes of the desert and began to raise new forces.
The man’s resilience was remarkable. Whenever the Romans defeated one of his armies, this leader would quickly raise a new force to challenge his enemy. Only by killing Tacfarinas could the revolt be ended. Within two years, this rebel figurehead rose once again to challenge Rome with a new army. Only now he realised he had an unbelievable opportunity.
A new hope
Following the victory in 22 AD, the Emperor Tiberius made a potentially game-changing decision. Believing the southern border of his Empire was now safe, he relocated one of the African legions to Europe.
In this one act, Rome’s military power in Africa significantly decreased. Only one legion remained to protect the provinces. Tacfarinas took the opportunity to prove that he was more than a mere bandit. The Roman general in Africa, P. Cornelius Dolabella, then made a critical decision.
Seven long years of war had proven that the heavily armoured Roman legionaries were ill-prepared to deal with the nomad forces, so Dolabella demanded military aid from Rome’s puppet state of Mauretania, now ruled by Juba II’s son Ptolemaeus. These local troops would be crucial: they were lightly armed and effective at countering Rome’s fleeting foes.
The critical moment
With these light forces, Dolabella designed a plan to surprise their enemy at a place called Auzea. Such surprise tactics were what Tacfarinas and his rebels had been doing for years. Now, Dolabella’s own light-armed units returned the favour: the surprise attack was a crushing success. Tacitus writes that it was so effective that “The enemy, by contrast unaware of anything, had no weapons, no order, no plan; like sheep, they were dragged off, butchered or captured.”
In one decisive move, Dolabella crushed the insurgent threat. He had caught the tribes off-guard and slaughtered them. Along with other tribal leaders, Tacfarinas died fighting.
Following the demise of Tacfarinas, Rome’s African provinces emerged from seven years strafed by insecurity. 