Zama

Titular see of Numidia. There were two sees of this name: Zama Major and Zama Minor.

Zama Minor, represented at the Conference of Carthage, 255 by the Bishop Marcellus, is commonly identified with the ruins Henshir Sidi-Amor el Djedidi near Furni, on the frontier, southeast of Tunis.

Zama Major, or Zama Regia, located by the majority of historians and archaeologists on the borders of Silvana at the village of Djama, south of Tunis, sent the Bishop Dialogus to the Conference of Carthage, 411. It was here that Scipio defeated Hannibal in the famous battle which decided the fate of Africa, 19 October, 202 B.C. A fragment of an inscription showing the former existence of a colony was found there, and, according to a decree of the year A.D. 322, Zama was called Colonia Aelia Hadriana Augusta Zama Regia, thus verifying the identification.

TOULOTTE, Géographie de l'Afrique chrétienne proconsulaire (Rennes, 1892), 345-349; LEHMANNS in Jahrbücher fur classiche Philologie, XX (supplement), 526-616; WINCKLER in Bulletin de géographie et d'archéologie d'Oran, XIV, 17-46; Mélanges d'archeologie et d'hist. de l'Ecole Française de Rome, XV, 306-308.

S. VAILHÉ