Antalas (r. 530-548 AD) was a chieftain of a Christianized people in North Africa known as the Frexenses, who played a major role in the conflicts between the Byzantine Roman Empire and various indigenous peoples in the North African provinces.
At first, Antalas was an ally of the Byzantines after they captured the area from the Germanic Vandals, whom he had fought previously. However, the relationship between Constantinople and Antalas soured when the Byzantines had his brother Guarizilla executed after a revolt in 543. A series of bloody struggles between the North African locals and their Byzantine overlords ensued, but when the Byzantines won the Battle of the Fields of Cato in 548, Antalas and his fellow African chieftains found themselves forced back into submission. The Byzantine Empire would thereafter maintain control of the area until the invasion of Arab Muslim armies in the late seventh century AD.
I have not found any surviving portraits showing how Antalas may have looked, so I ended up basing his dreadlock-like hairstyle on those worn by “Moorish” or Numidian cavalry on the Roman Trajan’s column.