Titular Episcopal See of Sufes

Sufes

Shown within Tunisia
Location	Tunisia
Region	Kasserine Governorate
Coordinates	35°32′48″N 9°04′25″E / 35.546667°N 9.073611°E / 35.546667; 9.073611

Sufes was a town in the late Roman province of Byzacena, which became a Christian bishopric that is included in the Catholic Church's list of titular sees.

The ruins of Roman Sufes are found near Sbiba a village in Tunisia's province of Kasserine. It was a small town from which Roman roads branched out to neighboring towns. It was on several hills sloped towards the plain, and covered a portion of the plain itself with a perimeter of about 6 km (3.7 mi).

There are few surviving records of Sufes. It is mentioned in the Antonine Itinerary as twenty five miles from Tucca Terebintha, and Victor Guérin discovered an inscription at the Sufes site, which described it as "splendissimus et felicissimus ordo Coloniae Sufetanae" and showed further on that Hercules was the genius loci, a type of tutelary deity, of Sufes.

It is not known when Sufes was founded, but it was known as a castellum in the history of Roman-era Tunisia during the early Empire, and probably became a colonia about the time of Marcus Aurelius, who reigned between 161 and 180, as its name colonia Aurelia Sufetana indicates. It had been a bishopric since at least AD 255 but the majority of its inhabitants were still pagan. In AD 411, both a Catholic and a Donatist bishopric were located there.

At the beginning of the 4th century, pagans outnumbered Christians.Punics formed the predominant population of towns and retained the Punic language until the 6th century; in certain towns the Christian bishops were obliged to know Punic, since it was the only language that the people understood.