The wars with Carthage in the second century before the Christian era drew the Romans into the occupation of Tunisia. They were enabled finally to conquer and destroy Carthage by allying themselves with the Numidian and Mauretanian kings, who, in their desire to establish complete home rule in North Africa, were anxious to destroy the Carthaginian power. But after the destruction of Carthage in 146 B.C. Rome picked quarrels, first with the Kings of Numidia, and next with those farther west in what are now called Algeria and Morocco, with the result that between 104 and 50 B.C. the region equivalent to Tunisia and western Tripoli became the Roman province of Africa; while all the coast region of Algeria and Morocco was annexed to the Roman Empire in 46 B.C. and 42 A.C. respectively. Some time previous to this, in 96 B.C., the Romans had annexed the old Greek colonies in Cyrenaica, to which—as a Roman province—was added Egypt in 30 B.C.; while Roman armies established Roman influence in Fezzan by 19 B.C. Consequently, by the middle of the first century of the Christian era, the Roman power was predominant over the whole coast-belt of North Africa. Roman explorers even penetrated far into Morocco, examined the High Atlas range, and crossed it into the Sahara Desert near Figuig; in fact, a Roman general, Suetonius Paulinus, afterwards a conqueror of Britain, penetrated in 50 A.C. to the palm-fringed river valleys south of the Atlas range, which would seem to have been in Pliocene times the head-waters of streams flowing far south into the Niger basin. One such stream was called by Roman geographers the Ger, and is still known as Gir by the Berbers.