Provincia Byzacena | |||||
Province of the Byzantine Empire | |||||
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Capital | Hadrumetum | ||||
Historical era | Antiquity | ||||
• | Division by Diocletian | c. 293 | |||
• | Arab-Byzantine Wars | 698 | |||
Today part of | Tunisia |
Byzacena was a Roman province in what is now Tunisia.
At the end of the third century AD, the Roman Emperor Diocletian divided the great Roman province of Africa Proconsularis into three smaller provinces: Zeugitana in the north, still governed by a proconsul and referred to as Proconsularis, Byzacena, and Tripolitania in the south. It corresponded roughly to the modern Tunisian region of Sahel.
Hadrumetum (modern Sousse) became the capital of the newly made province, whose governor had the rank of consularis. At this period the Metropolitan Archbishopric of Byzacena was, after the great metropolis Carthage, the most important city in Roman (North) Africa west of Egypt and its Patriarch of Alexandria.
Ancient episcopal sees of Byzacena listed in the Annuario Pontificio as titular sees: