Medaura
Ἀμμαίδαρα
Medaura (Ad Medera, Itin. Anton.; Peut. Tab.; Hygin. de Lim. p. 163; Ἀμμαίδαρα al. Ἀμμέδερα, Ptol. 4.3.30: Eth. Medaurensis), a town of Numidia, which had originally belonged to the kingdom of Syphax, but was annexed to that of Massinissa at the close of the Second Punic War, and afterwards was colonised by a detachment of Roman veterans, when it attained considerable splendour. Appuleius was born at this place, where his father had been duumvir,
and calls himself Seminumida
and Semigaetulus.
(Apolog. pp. 443, 444.) It lay on the road from Lares to Theveste, 48 M. P. from the former and 25 M. P. from the latter. At a river ARDATIO, which flowed between this place and Theveste, Mazcecel defeated the Moorish chieftain Gildo. (Oros. 7.36; St. Martin, Le Beau, Bas Empire, vol. v. p. 161; comp. Gibbon, c. xxix.) Justinian fortified and placed a garrison in this town, which Procopius (de Aed. 6.6) calls Αὐμέτερα. It is perhaps a different place from Madaura, to which Augustine was sent to be educated (Confess. ii. 3).
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.