Calama (Numidia)

Calama (Numidia)

Calama: Roman theatre
Shown within Algeria
Location	Algeria
Region	Guelma Province
Coordinates	36°28′02″N 7°25′48″E / 36.467313°N 7.430052°E / 36.467313; 7.430052

Calama was a colonia in the Roman province of Numidia situated where Guelma in Algeria now stands.

G. Mokhtar places it just within the Roman province of Africa Proconsularis, to the east of Numidia, but it is generally believed to have been in Numidia, a province created probably in 198–199.

Calama was founded by the Phoenicians and called Malaca (meaning "salt"). This toponym is also the etymological root of Málaga in Spain. Malaca was situated in the Berber kingdom of Numidia. When this area later came under Roman rule, the city was renamed Calama.

Whether Calama is identical with the town of Suthul which the Roman propraetor Aulus Postumius Albinus Magnus unsuccessfully tried to take in 110 BC, (cf. Battle of Suthul) is disputed, with some denying and others cautiously affirming.

In the 1st century AD, Calama, then part of the Roman province of Numidia, became a major urban centre. It was given the rank of a Roman municipium as early as Hadrian, and of a colonia later. The city was sponsored by Vibia Aurelia Sabina, sister of the Emperor Commodus (late 2nd century). Calama was, with Setifis (Setif) and Hippo Regius (Annaba), one of the granaries of Rome in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. Under Septimius Severus, Calama became one of the most prosperous in the Roman empire, with thermae and a huge theatre.