consequences. [Sidenote: Transformation of the Phoenician towns into Italian.] The transformation of Phoenician urban rights into Italian began under Caesar. The old Phoenician town of Utica, predecessor and heiress of Carthage--as some compensation for the severe injury to its interests by the restoration of the old capital of the country--obtained, as the first Italian organisation in Africa, perhaps from the dictator Caesar, Latin rights, certainly from his successor Augustus the position of a Roman _municipium_. The town of Tingi received the same rights, in gratitude for the fidelity which it had maintained during the Perusine war (p. 311). Several others soon followed; yet the number of communities with Roman rights in Africa down to Trajan and Hadrian remained limited.[299] Thenceforth there were assigned on a great scale--although, so far as we see, throughout by individual bestowal--to communities hitherto Phoenician municipal or else colonial rights; for the latter too were subsequently as a rule conferred merely in a titular way without settlement of colonists. If the dedications and memorials of all sorts, that formerly appeared but sparingly in Africa, present themselves in abundance from the beginning of the second century, this was doubtless chiefly the consequence of the adoption of numerous townships into the imperial union of the towns with best rights. [Sidenote: Settlement of Italian colonists in Africa.] Besides the conversion of Phoenician towns into Italian _municipia_ or colonies, not a few towns of Italian rights arose in Africa by means of the settlement of Italian colonists. For this too the dictator Caesar laid the foundation--as indeed for no province perhaps so much as for Africa were the paths prescribed by him--and the emperors of the first dynasty followed his example. We have already spoken of the founding of Carthage; the town obtained not at once, but very soon, Italian settlers and therewith Italian organisation and full rights of Roman citizenship. Beyond doubt from the outset destined once more to be the capital of the province and laid out as a great city, it rapidly in point of fact became so. Carthage and Lugudunum were the only cities of the West which, besides the capital of the empire, had a standing garrison of imperial troops. Moreover in Africa--in part certainly already by the dictator, in part only by the first emperor--a series of small country-towns in the districts nearest to Sicily, Hippo Diarrhytus, Clupea, Curubi, Neapolis, Carpi, Maxula, Uthina, Great-Thuburbo, Assuras, were furnished with colonies, probably not merely to provide for veterans, but to promote the Latinising of this region. The two colonies which arose at that time in the former kingdom of Numidia, Cirta with its dependencies, and New-Cirta or Sicca, were the result of special obligations of Caesar towards the leader of free bands Publius Sittius from Nuceria and his Italiano-African bands (iv. 470, 574) {iv. 447, 544.}.