It served as a waypoint on the trade routes between the Strait of Gibraltar and Phoenicia and as a market for the inland products of the area.

[2] During his civil war, Julius Caesar defeated Metellus Scipio and the Numidian king Juba I at the costly 46 BC Battle of Thapsus.

The town's enormous mole may have been begun by the local emperors Gordian I, II, and III, but their reigns were too brief to have finished the work.

[3] The construction may have been abandoned partway through; Thapsus was never known as a world-class port and, after the collapse of Thysdrus in the 3rd century, all the area's maritime trade is known to have occurred through the harbors at Sullecthum, Thaenae, Leptis, and Gummi.

Thapsus was the site of one of the Roman Empire's greatest harbor moles, a huge concrete and stone breakwater extending almost a kilometer from shore; only the first hundred or so meters, however, remain above water.