[4] Surviving Roman inscriptions and coinage standardized its latinization as Hadrumetum[1] but it appears in other sources as Adrumetum,[3] Adrumetus,[5] Adrimetum, Hadrymetum, etc.

[1] Upon its notional refounding as a Roman colony, its formal name was emended to Colonia Concordia Ulpia Trajana Augusta Frugifera Hadrumetina to honor its imperial sponsor.

[7] Hadrumetum controlled the mouth of a small river[8] on the Gulf of Hammamet (Latin: Sinus Neapolitanus), an inlet of the Mediterranean along the Tunisian coast.

Its establishment preceded Carthage's[9] but, like other western Phoenician colonies, it became part of the Carthaginian Empire[1] following Nebuchadnezzar II's long siege of Tyre in the 580s and 570s BC.

Agathocles of Syracuse captured the town in 310 BC[1] during the Seventh Sicilian War, as part of his failed attempt to move the conflict to Africa.

[13] According to Suetonius, this landing was the occasion of the famously deft recovery, when Caesar tripped while coming ashore but dealt with the poor omen by grabbing handfuls of dirt and proclaiming "I have you now, Africa!"

In 434, it was largely destroyed by the Vandals;[5][10] their fervent Arianism produced a number of orthodox martyrs in the remaining community, including SS Felix and Victorian.

rediscovered the Christian catacombs in 1904; the tunnels extend for miles through small subterranean galleries filled with Roman and Byzantine sarcophagi and inscriptions.

As a major Roman city, Hadrumetum produced a number of Christian saints, including Mavilus during the regional persecutions of Caracalla's reign and the Bishop Felix and proconsul Victorian during the Vandals' efforts to forcibly convert their subjects to Arianism.