Stretching nearly 4,000 kilometers across the southern coast of the Mediterranean from Alexandria to Tangiers, a land shelf 40–400 kilometers deep between the sea and the inhospitable, semiarid ridge on the east and the Atlas Mountain range or sand of the desert on the west, North Africa should have had little interest for the Romans. No such excuse is needed, however, for Rome’s presence in Egypt leading to the annexation of the country in 27 bce. It was made inevitable because of the role inadvertently played by the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt in Roman politics in the last few decades of the Republic, especially the episodes involving the dallying of Julius Caesar, and later Mark Anthony, with Cleopatra, the last Ptolemaic queen. Rome’s involvement with the central and western portions of North Africa (covering the coastal regions of the modern states of Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco), by contrast, is inextricably tied with its famous wars with Carthage during the third and second centuries bce. This involvement culminated, in a sense, with its final victory over its resourceful foe in 146 bce and the creation of the province of Africa Proconsularis.