Aggar (city)


Aggar was a town and bishopric in the Roman province of Byzacena. One of two cities in the area, it left vast ruins that are now called Sidi Amara. These edifices are situated in the plain of Siliana, around 60 kilometres east of Maktar.
A distinct Sidi Amara further north in Tunisia holds the ruins of the Ancient town of Avioccala, located in the Roman province of Africa Proconsularis.

Ruins

The ruins of Aggar, whose identity is confirmed by inscriptions found there, include those of a triumphal arch opening onto a large porticoed area, with a temple behind it, which must have been the forum and the capitol. A Byzantine fortress, 30 m square with square, slightly projecting corner towers was built on an arcaded structure identified as a temple of Juno. Another temple of unidentified dedication adjoins this citadel. Outside the city proper stands a two-storey mausoleum of a certain C. Marius Romanus with roofing almost intact. A ruined theatre can also be seen. About 1500 metres west of the town, the wadi Jilf was crossed by a bridge originally of ten arches, of which six remain.

History

Aggar appears in the Tabula Peutingeriana
In AD 232, Aggar was granted the rank of municipium, and later became a colonia.

Ecclesiastical history

Aggar was among the many cities of sufficient importance in Roman North Africa to become a suffragan diocese of the Metropolitan of Carthage, in the papal sway, but faded, plausibly at the seventh century advent of Islam.
The only historically documented bishop of Aggar is Donatus, one of the Catholic bishops whom the Arian Vandal king Huneric summoned to a Council of Carthage in 484 and then exiled, unlike their schismatical Donatist counterparts.

Titular see

The diocese was nominally restored by the Catholic Church in 1933 as a Latin titular bishopric of Aggar / Aggaritan.
It has had the following incumbents, so far of the fitting Episcopal rank: