With Roman influence growing in North Africa it almost seemed inevitable that the Garamantes would come into direct contact with them at some point. In the 19 CE Augustus ordered Cornelius Balbus to subdue the Garamantes. Balbus led a force and took Garama, the more recent capital of the Garamantes.
Pliny is the main source for this event and he wrote that this earned Balbus a triumph, uniquely so as Balbus was the first foreigner to win one (he had been born in modern day Cadiz)[6]. From Pliny’s description it can be concluded that this had been some time in the making. Garamantes had offered previous resistance, the main trick being to fill in wells as they retreated which made pursuit of them impossible.
The Roman view may have been that the Garamantes were brought to heel, yet they were still capable of providing Rome with a problem it had no easy answer to. During the reign of Tiberius (14-37 CE) an individual called Tacfarinas led a guerrilla style campaign against Roman in Northern Africa.
Avoiding open conflict Tacfarinas led lighting attacks against Roman villages and infrastructure. This type of raiding was almost impossible to repel. By the time a Roman force arrived Tacfarinas was long gone. In one instance this style was dropped for a siege on a Roman fort which led to its capture and defeat.
The involvement of the Garamantes was subtle, Tacitus noted how they acted with a form of plausible deniability though they were offering men and support[7]. It’s difficult to imagine their expertise and networks not supporting Tacfarinas in some way. Their response to the defeat of Tacfarinas was to send dignitaries to Rome in order to confirm their friendship.
To what extent Tacfarinas offered a genuine threat to Rome is difficult to assess. Tacitus never held back from criticising Tiberius, so we are left to wonder whether this was given more weight in order to offer another criticism of Tiberius as an Emperor unable to control his empire.
The Garamantes are mentioned later that century. In 69 CE a war broke out between Leptis Magna and Oea, two cities on the coast. Oea recruited Garamantes and came close to winning, which would have been a disaster given the importance of Leptis to Rome.
Rome’s response came in the form of a force led by Valerius Festus and the Garamantian capital was once again captured. The outset wasn’t a sack or desolation but a treaty, presumably one which kept them from any military support or assistance. The existence of a treaty supports the argument that Rome appreciated the importance of the Garamantes. Rather than trodden into the sand, the Garamantes needed to be brought into the Roman fold.
Pinging folks from an older history thread.
fossilised water
really?
A water source later accessed by Gadaffi's Greaty Man Made River project across the traditional Garamantes area of Libya,, the 8th wonder of the world, destroyed by the Liberal Fascist idiots Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the first war of the modern era based exclusively on liberal fasfcist political correctness and virtue signaling, a horrible scam against NATO, and the Obama creation of millions of Arab Spring refugees aimed at the soft underbelly of so called white privileged Europe.
They have found similar wells in the desert region of Nasca in Peru. I don’t know that the wells were in series, but it wuld make sense if they were hitting the same water tables.