Julián Monge-Nájera, Katherine Bonilla-Badilla, editor
2021
In 45 BC the troops of Julius Caesar defeated the Numidian king Juba I. Juba committed suicide in Tunisia, but Julius Caesar took his young son to Rome, a little boy who would be in “preschool” if he lived in our times. Little Juba was not mistreated; on the contrary, he was treated as a noble and received the best education, and he spoke and wrote perfect Latin and Greek. Years passed, Julius Caesar was assassinated, and Cleopatra and Antony died, but they left behind a daughter named Cleopatra Selena II (Roller, 2003). In 28 BC, in need of an ally in Africa, Emperor Octavius Augustus sent Juba II to reign in his father's country, and there his story would be joined with that of a small snail. Accompanied by his wife Cleopatra Selena II, the wise Numidian king enlarged the ancient Carthaginian population of Volubilis and made it capital of the kingdom. History tells us that he and Cleopatra Selena were wise sovereigns. Juba II wrote excellent books about archeology and Mediterranean history, as well as two zoological treatises, which were widely cited by Pliny the Elder (Roller, 2003). Years passed and the city was devastated by an earthquake in the 4th century, but among the stones and vegetation, one inhabitant survived, the Cernuella virgate (Hogan, 2007) snails. But Cernuella virgata should not be there for a very simple reason: it is an European snail, not an African snail. How did it get there? My hypothesis is that the snail’s arrival in Volubilis occurred in the 2nd century, when the local revolts forced Emperor Marcus Aurelius to send Roman troops and build a wall around the city (Rogerson, 2010). As in the 1990s, when Iraqi snails were detected in military equipment returning to the United States after Operation Desert Storm, Roman snails must have traveled attached to military equipment and other supplies carried by the Roman troops. This does not exclude the possibility that the Romans willingly took them as food, since these particular species of snail
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