Volubilis

(Oubili, Ksar Pharaoun)

A city in western Mauretania (Morocco), thirteen miles north of the modern Meknès, on a fertile grain-bearing plateau at the foot of Mount Zerhoun, Volubilis was situated between two streams from which it took its name, meaning `winding’ in Berber. After an existence going back to prehistoric times, there is evidence of Phoenician (Carthaginian) and Liby-Phoenician influence from the third and second centuries BC.

Under Juba II, Rome's client king of Mauretania (25 BC–AD 23), the place enjoyed considerable prosperity. When his successor Ptolemaeus was murdered in AD 40 and the Mauretanians revolted against the Romans, Volubilis, under the command of its chief local official and chief priest Marcus Valerius Severus (son of Bostar), took the Roman side, and after Claudius' establishment of two provinces four years later, it became a Roman municipium in Mauretania Tingitana. Thereafter the town grew rapidly, especially in the period of the Severi (193–235), and seems to have replaced Tingi (Tangier) as the provincial capital. Inscriptions bear witness to a century-long series of meetings and agreements at Volubilis between the Roman governors (procurators) and the tribe of the Baquates in the interior. About 280/85, however, these tribesmen had become so menacing that the city was evacuated by the imperial administration. Thus it lay outside the province of Tingitana or Tingitania established shortly afterward by Diocletian and Maximian; although a population of Romanized Berbers retaining a semblance of the old organization went on living on the ruins until the Arabs arrived.

Pre-Roman houses have been excavated in the western sector of the habitation center, and traces of somewhat later dwellings can be seen on the south spur of the plateau, on which the early acropolis apparently stood. To the east, an unusual shrine of the epoch of Juba II, erroneously known as the `Temple of Saturn,’ goes back to an oriental tradition that has not been satisfactorily identified. At the city center a large colonnaded forum was built over earlier structures at about the time of Nero (AD 54–68). Then, in the 160s, a city wall perforated by eight gates and equipped with semicircular towers was erected. Major construction, systematization and reorientation took place in the Severan era, which witnessed the rebuilding of the forum, adjoined by a basilica and a capitolium dedicated by Macrinus (217–18).

This period also witnessed the major development of a northeastern quarter, comprising spacious and attractive houses (with which shops and oil presses and grain mills were often associated). It has been disputed whether the character of these dwellings is basically Greek or Roman, but the latter interpretation is now regarded as more probable. The quarter was approached from the south by a monumental colonnaded street, preceded by a monumental arch in honor of Caracalla (211–17) and flanked by the so-called `Palace of Gordian,’ probably the governors' residence and administrative office, rebuilt by Marcus Ulpius Victor under Gordian III (238–44), perhaps on the site of Juba's palace. Second- and third-century housing also provides examples of workmen's two-room dwellings, made of mud-brick. Three sets of baths and a small provision market (macellum) have come to light, and inscriptions offer evidence of Mithraic, Egyptian and Syrian cults, bearing witness to the presence of extensive near-eastern elements in the community. A remarkable feature of Volubilis is the quantity of first-class bronzes that have been found among its ruins. They include portraits of Cato the Younger and Juba, and a study of an old fisherman, and are now divided between the Volubilis and Rabat museums.