Cirta, also known by various other names in antiquity, was the ancient Berber and Roman settlement which later became Constantine, Algeria. Cirta was the capital city of the Berber kingdom of Numidia; its strategically important port city was Russicada. Although Numidia was a key ally of the ancient Roman Republic during the Punic Wars (264–146BC), Cirta was subject to Roman invasions during the 2nd and 1st centuriesBC. Eventually it fell under Roman dominion during the time of Julius Caesar. Cirta was then repopulated with Roman colonists by Caesar and Augustus and was surrounded by the autonomous territory of a "Confederation of four free Roman cities" (with Chullu, Russicada, and Milevum), ruled initially by Publius Sittius. The city was destroyed in the beginning of the 4thcentury and was rebuilt by the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, who gave his name to the newly constructed city, Constantine. The Vandals damaged Cirta, but emperor reconquered and improved the Roman city. It declined in importance after the Muslim invasions, but a small community continued at the site for several centuries. Its ruins are now an archaeological site. A number of significant archaeological finds have been found in the area, including a large corpus of Punic inscriptions known as the Cirta steles. Names The town's Punic name (, probably pronounced "Kirthan", with a hard, breathy /tʰ/ sound) is probably not the Punic word meaning "town", which was written with a Q (i.e., qoph) rather than a K (kaph). Instead, it is likely a Punic transcription of an existing Berber placename. This was later Latinized as Cirta. Under Julius Caesar, the Sittian settlement was known as Coloniarum Cirtensium; Pliny also knew it as ("Cirta of the Sittians"). Under Augustus, in 27 or 30BC, its official name was Colonia Julia Juvenalis Honoris et Virtutis Cirta; this was sometimes reduced to ("Julian Cirta"), 'Colonia Cirta or simply Cirta. This name was rendered as by the historians Diodorus Siculus, Polybius, Appian, Cassius Dio, and Procopius and by the geographers Ptolemy and Strabo. After its refounding as Constantina () by Constantine the Great after AD312, Cirta became known as Constantine. Following its Muslim conquest, it was known as Qusantina. History Numidian Kingdom Cirta was the capital of the Berber kingdom of Numidia, an important political, economic, and military site west of the mercantile empire run by the Phoenician settlement of Carthage to its east. During the second of Rome's wars