In 31 BC, Octavian defeated the combined forces of Marc Antony and Cleopatra VII of Egypt at Actium and became the first Roman emperor, taking title of Augustus. To secure his rule in the provinces, Augustus created several client kingdoms, which in Roman parlance, were kingdoms that were Roman subjects and allies, but still maintained their nominal independence and governing institutions. In North Africa, where Roman rule was challenged by fiercely independent Berber nomads whom the Romans collectively referred to as Gaetuli. Faced with having to secure his rule in the rest of the empire, Augustus chose to carve out a client kingdom from what are now the modern states of Algeria and Morocco called Mauretania. Although this state was to serve as a buffer against Rome’s Berber foes, it also produced one of the most prolific scholar-kings and explorers, whose many works, by an unfortunate coincidence, have not survived into modern times.
Juba Rex Mauritaniae
As ruler of the Kingdom of Mauretania, Augustus chose a personal friend of his named Juba. For Juba, this was a restoration of his birthright. Juba had been a prince of Numidia, a kingdom that had covered a what is now northeastern Algeria. His father Juba I had fought against Julius Caesar on the Republican side during the Roman civil war, but lost his throne following the republicans’ defeat at Thapsus in 46BC. Caesar took his young son as a hostage and eventually entrusted him to his grand-nephew Octavian. In captivity, Juba received an education in Latin Greek, and numerous sciences, setting the stage for his prolific career as a scholar. Once Octavian became Augustus, Juba was the perfect candidate for king of Mauretania due to the close bond of friendship and trust between the two men. Upon Juba’s marriage to Cleopatra Selene, the daughter of Cleopatra VII and Marc Anthony, the royal couple moved to the city of Iol Caesarea in North Africa to begin their reign as sovereigns of Mauretania.
Mare Nostrum and Oceanus
Juba’s kingdom covered a vast expanse of territory, from the Atlantic to Western Algeria. For the Romans, much of this was uncharted territory. For the Romans, the known world was composed of Africa, Asia, and Europe bounded by a vast body of water called Oceanus, the root for our word “ocean.” The Romans’ world was centered on Mediterranean, which they referred to as Mare Nostrum (our sea). To sail westward beyond the Pillars of Hercules (Strait of Gibraltar) and into Oceanus was to leave the known world on a voyage without end. Despite the dangers of sailing in the open sea, sailors’ tales told of a group of islands west of Africa’s Atlantic coast called the Fortunatae Insulae (the Blessed Isles) as early as the 7th century BC, when a Phoenician sailor named Hanno supposedly reached them. According to the Roman writer general Sertorius via Plutarch, these islands were the location of Elysium, where the blessed souls of the dead went in the afterlife. Juba, perhaps on Augustus’ orders, or perhaps driven by his own curiosity, put together an expedition to explore the islands and discover if the legends were true.
The Expedition to the Blessed Isles
The only surviving account of Juba’s expedition comes from chapter 37 of the sixth book of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History. According to Pliny, Juba and his men found an archipelago consisting of seven islands. These islands had a diversity of landscapes, from tropical palm-covered beaches to snowy pine-covered mountains. The biggest they called Canaria after encountering a large number of dogs on the island. The expedition captured two and took them back to North Africa as exotica (. Another peculiar detail is found in Pliny’s claim that the ocean around the islands regurgitated the bodies of sea monsters. A more scientific explanation suggests that Juba’s men witnessed underwater volcanic activity.
Based on Pliny’s description, the number of islands, and the name of the largest one, Canaria, these islands most likely correspond to the modern Canary Islands. The modern Canary Islands are composed of seven islands, as the various ancient writers claimed, are volcanic, and have a climate similar to that described in Pliny’s Natural History. Even the name of the islands today originates in Roman times. Although the names of the islands seem to refer to the bird, the islands take their name from the largest island, Canaria, which has evolved into the Spanish Gran Canaria, and was borrowed into English as “Canary.” The only discrepancy is that Pliny and Juba made no mention of any inhabitants, a question that we shall briefly explore.
The Deserted Isles?
None of the ancient accounts make any reference to the islands’ inhabitants. Pliny’s description, however, betrays signs that the islands were inhabited. Pliny mentions that Juba’s expedition found a stone temple on the island of Junonia (probably modern Lanzarote) and the remains of structures on Canaria. This leads to the obvious question: Who built them? Later medieval accounts note that the Canary Islands (the Blessed Isles of classical lore), were inhabited by a people called Guanches, a people of Berber that maintained a Stone Age existence in apparent isolation from the rest of the world. We do not know if Juba and his men encountered the Guanches. It is likely that such a detail would have made it into the accounts and spurred further exploration of the islands, so if Juba, who wrote the original account of the islands that Pliny used as a source did encounter them, for whatever reason, he chose to omit them.
Aftermath
Juba would go on to publish numerous works on linguistics, geography, history, and nature during his rule in Mauretania. However, none of these have survived, an many of them are known only through citations in later authors, in particular Pliny the Elder who cites Juba over sixty times. There is one more question regarding Juba’s expedition. Pliny’s account mentions that the dogs from Canaria were brought back home to Juba, suggesting that the king did not take part in the expedition. I would like to believe that the king did take part in the expedition. We know that he personally led an expedition in Arabia and Eastern Anatolia (modern Turkey), so there is no reason why he could not have participated in the Atlantic expedition. Ultimately, we will never know for sure, but regardless, his prolific scholarship and interest in discovering the unknown make him a fascinating yet little-known figure in scientific and academic history.