White Tunis

The site of Agathocles's principal victory over the Carthaginian field army shortly after his landing in Africa in 310 BCE. The Greek name Leukon Tyneta, "White Tunis", distinguished the location from other Tunes settlements; the modern city of Tunis preserves the name. In the late fourth century BCE Tunes was a settlement of the Carthaginian hinterland, close enough to Carthage itself (~15 km south-southwest) that Agathocles's establishment of a base there put Greek troops within striking distance of the city's walls, a fact that drove the Carthaginian senatorial panic and Bomilcar's subsequent attempted coup. Tunes remained a Carthaginian hinterland settlement until the city's destruction in 146 BCE; in the post-Carthage Roman and later Arab periods it grew into the successor city to Carthage, eventually giving its name to the modern Tunisian state.