A number of significant archaeological finds have been found in the area, including a large corpus of Punic inscriptions, known as the Cirta steles.

[8] This name was rendered as Ancient Greek: Κίρτα, romanized: Kírta by the historians Diodorus Siculus, Polybius, Appian, Cassius Dio, and Procopius and by the geographers Ptolemy and Strabo.

Cirta was the capital of the Berber kingdom of Numidia, an important political, economic, and military site west of the mercantile empire run by the Phoenician settlement of Carthage to its east.

Adherbal appealed for Roman help and a senatorial commission brokered a seemingly successful division of the kingdom between the two heirs.

Rome then prosecuted the Jugurthine War against his reunited Numidian state[13] to assert their hegemony over the region[citation needed] and to secure the protection of its citizens abroad.

As Cirta rebuilt in the 1st century BC, its population was quite diverse: native Numidians alongside Carthaginian refugees and Greek, Roman, and Italian merchants, bankers,[14] settlers, and army veterans.

[15] This expatriate community made it an important business hub of Rome's African holdings, even while it remained technically outside the lands of the Roman Republic.

Cirta administered fortifications (castella) in the High Plains and at the north end of the colonies: Castellum Mastarense, Elephantum, Tidditanorum, Cletianis, Thibilis, Sigus, and others.

In 27 and 26 BC,[17] the area's administration was restructured under Augustus, who split Cirta into communities (Latin: pagi) separating the Numidians from the Sittiani and other newly settled Romans.

After the dissolution of its confederation of colonies in the 4th century, Cirta recovered its role as a capital when it headed the territory of Numidia Cirtensis created under Diocletian: however, after some decades, Emperor Constantine the Great reunited the two provinces created in 303 (Cirtensis & Militiana) in a single one, administered from Cirta, which was renamed Constantina (modern Constantine).

[23] The bishop Silvanus was a Donatist and was prosecuted in December 320 by Domitius Zenophilus, the consularis and proconsul of Africa; the records of the proceedings (commentarii) are preserved in the Latin: Gesta apud Zenophilum, lit.

[citation needed] Although many Roman, Byzantine, and Vandal cities were destroyed during the expansion of the Caliphate, Constantine survived in reduced form[26] with a small Christian community as late as the 10th century.