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Zama

Historical Article from The Catholic Encyclopedia

Catholic Encyclopedia

Historical Context

This article preserves the historical wording and context of the printed encyclopedia. Dates, statistics, terminology, disciplinary descriptions, and civic or ecclesiastical circumstances may reflect the period in which the article was published.

Article Text

Titular see of Numidia. There were two sees of this name: Zama Major and Zama Minor.

Zama Minor, represented at the Conference of Carthage, 255 by the Bishop Marcellus, is commonly identified with the ruins Henshir Sidi-Amor el Djedidi near Furni, on the frontier, southeast of Tunis.

Zama Major, or Zama Regia, located by the majority of historians and archaeologists on the borders of Silvana at the village of Djama, south of Tunis, sent the Bishop Dialogus to the Conference of Carthage, 411. It was here that Scipio defeated Hannibal in the famous battle which decided the fate of Africa, 19 October, 202 B.C. A fragment of an inscription showing the former existence of a colony was found there, and, according to a decree of the year A.D. 322, Zama was called Colonia Aelia Hadriana Augusta Zama Regia, thus verifying the identification.

Sources

TOULOTTE, Géographie de l’Afrique chrétienne proconsulaire (Rennes, 1892), 345-349; LEHMANNS in Jahrbücher fur classiche Philologie, XX (supplement), 526-616; WINCKLER in Bulletin de géographie et d’archéologie d’Oran, XIV, 17-46; Mélanges d’archeologie et d’hist. de l’Ecole Française de Rome, XV, 306-308.

Source Record

Author
Vailhé, Siméon
Publication
The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 15. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1912.
Nihil Obstat
Nihil Obstat. October 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor.
Imprimatur
Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.