This city is very ancient, having probably been built by the aboriginals, Berbers, and was usually called by the Romans, Taigo on Tingis.

This town, which by the ancients was called Tingis, or Tingir, and appears to have been the metropolis of the Western Mauritania, or Tingitania, as it was named, to distinguish it from Mauritania Cæsariensis; according to Pliny and others, was first founded ed fay Antæus (about a thousand years before Christ), the same who was afterwards conquered and slain by Hercules.

But according to others, Tingis, or the present Tangiers, lays claim to a more ancient founder than Antæus.

Indeed the name Tingis, in the language of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, signifies an emporium.

When the Mauritaniæ became subject to the Romans, in the reign of Julius Cæsar, Bocchus, the son-in-law of Jugurtha, having defeated Bogud, the king of Mauritania Tingitania, he became possessed of that country, and Augustus, or, as some say, Octavius, confirmed this acquisition to him; and the inhabitants of Tingis were allowed the privileges of Roman citizens.

Many wonderful things have been related of Antæus, by various authors, in his two residences of Tingis and Lixos.

From its situation, it perfectly corresponds with the Exillissa of Ptolemy, being the first maritime town to the eastward of the ancient Tingis, or modern Tangiers.