Today called Sousse, the capital of the Sahel and an important city in Tunisia, Hadrumetum -like Utica and Carthage - was founded by the Phoenicians. Declared a free city in the beginning of the Roman time, in reward for falling away from Carthage and taking sides with Rome, Hadrumetum quite rapidly stepped under the protection of the new master of Africa as it obtained the status of colony as early as the reign of Trajan. During the lower Empire, after the reform of Diocletian, Hadrumetum became the capital of a new province, Byzacene, an independent circonscription in the great Proconsulship, with frontiers stretching from Hammamet in the north down to Gabes in the south. With a port and an inland, " dark " with olive groves, Hadrumetum was a fairly porsperous city !