NOVA TIME NEWS!: Κυρήνη , Λιβύη--Cyrene, Libya

Cyrene, Libya

The Greek colonizations of Crete and Rhodes of the 9th century BC were shortly followed by their colonizations of Cyrenaica in Eastern Libya. The city of Cyrene was a Greek colony, built in the seventh century BC (631 BC) upon the oracle advice of Delphi, on one of the best verdant regions of Eastern Libya's Green Mountain, by immigrants (or refugees according to some sources) from the island of Thera (Santhorini). However, there was also a failed attempt to colonise Tripolitania under the command of Dorieus, the king of Sparta, who reached the River Cinyps (Wadi Caam), just east of Leptis Magna, in 520 BC and founded a city by that name.

Ancient marble floor

The prosperity of Cyrene was founded on the silphium plant, pictured on Cyrenaican coins, where it resembles a stylised leek or a sunflower. The plant once grew only in Libya and apparently its extinction was a grievous blow to the city's economy.

History

Cyrene was founded in 630 BC as a settlement of Greeks from the Greek island of Thera (Santorini), traditionally led by Battus I, at a site ten miles from its associated port, Apollonia (Marsa Sousa). Traditional details concerning the founding of the city are contained in Herodotus' Histories IV. Cyrene promptly became the chief town of ancient Libya and established commercial relations with all the Greek cities, reaching the height of its prosperity under its own kings in the 5th century BC. Soon after 460 BC it became a republic. In 413 BC, during the Peloponnesian War, Cyrene supplied Spartan forces with two triremes and pilots. After the death of Alexander the Great of Macedon (323 BC), the Cyrenian republic became subject to the Ptolemaic dynasty.

Ophelas, the general who occupied the city in Ptolemy I's name, ruled the city almost independently until his death, when Ptolemy's son-in-law Magas received governorship of the territory. In 276 BC Magas crowned himself king and declared de facto independence, marrying the daughter of the Seleucid king and forming with him an alliance in order to invade Egypt. The invasion was unsuccessful and in 250 BC, after Magas' death, the city was reabsorbed into Ptolemaic Egypt. Cyrenaica became part of the Ptolemaic empire controlled from Alexandria, and became Roman territory in 96 BC when Ptolemy Apion bequeathed Cyrenaica to Rome. In 74 BC the territory was formally transformed into a Roman province.

The inhabitants of Cyrene at the time of Sulla (c. 85 BC) were divided into four classes: citizens, farmers, resident aliens, and a minority population of Jews. The ruler of the town, Apion, bequeathed it to the Romans, but it kept its self-government. In 74 BC Cyrene was created a Roman province; but, whereas under the Ptolemies the Jewish inhabitants had enjoyed equal rights, they now found themselves increasingly oppressed by the now autonomous and much larger Greek population. Tensions came to a head in the insurrection of the Jews of Cyrene under Vespasian (73 AD, the First Roman-Jewish War) and especially Trajan (117 AD, the Kitos War). This revolt was quelled by Marcius Turbo, but not before huge numbers of people had been killed. According to Eusebius of Caesarea the outbreak of violence left Libya depopulated to such an extent that a few years later new colonies had to be established there by the emperor Hadrian just to maintain the viability of continued settlement.

Plutarch in his work De mulierum virtutibus ("On the Virtues of Women") describes how the tyrant of Cyrene, Nicocrates, was deposed by his wife Aretaphila of Cyrene around the year 50 BC
The famous "Venus of Cyrene", a headless marble statue representing the goddess Venus, a Roman copy of a Greek original, was discovered by Italian soldiers here in 1913. It was transported to Rome, where it remained until 2008, when it was returned to Libya. A large number of Roman sculptures and inscriptions were excavated at Cyrene by Captain Robert Murdoch Smith and Commander Edwin A. Porcher during the mid nineteenth century and can now be seen in the British Museum. They include the Apollo of Cyrene and a unique bronze head of an African man.

Description

A colony of the Greeks of Thera, Cyrene was one of the principal cities in the Hellenic world. It was Romanized and remained a great capital until the earthquake of AD 365. A thousand years of history is written into its ruins, which have been famous since the 18th century.

Cyrene was founded in the 4th century BC by Greeks of Thera (Santorini) guided by Battos, within a zone where Carthaginian influence was preponderant. From 631 BC (the traditional accepted date of its foundation) to 440 BC, this trading centre, situated in the interior, away from the sea, was dominated by the dynasty of the Battiadae. Within little less than a century (430-331), this kingdom was succeeded by a democratic regime; following which the city spontaneously submitted itself to the rule of Alexander the Great and, at his death, was annexed to the kingdom of the Lagids. One of the last of the line of descendants of Berenice and Ptolemy III Euergetes bequeathed it to the Roman people in 96 BC.

Entrance of Temple to Apollo

Established as a Roman province in 74 BC, Cyrenaica shared in the fortunes of the empire and, as such, never ceased to play a preponderant role in the Mediterranean world: it was given by Mark Anthony to Cleopatra, united with Crete by Augustus, who decreed the date of the battle of Actium (34 BC) as the beginning of a new era, and then separated from Crete by Diocletian in a reform of 305, which united it with Egypt. Its capitol, which was reconstructed in the 1st century AD and damaged during the insurrection of the Jews in 116, was entirely rebuilt from the reign of Hadrian. Its decline did not begin until the earthquake and tidal wave of 365, one of the great catastrophes of history. Ammianus Marcelinus found it deserted.

Cyrene, which was described by geographers from Herodotus to Synesius and had its praises sung by Pindar and Callimachus, is not only one of the cities of the Mediterranean world around which myths, legends and stories have been woven over more than 1,000 years, but it is also one of the most impressive complexes of ruins in the entire world.

To the north, the sanctuary and sacred fountain of Apollo, the fountain celebrated by Pindar, Herodotus and Callimachus, regroups the temples of Apollo (7th-4th centuries BC) and Artemis (7th-6th centuries BC), the sacella of Persephone, Hades and Hecate, votive monuments and treasuries. This cultic zone was completed, during the Roman period, by extremely large buildings of which the most important are the Baths of Trajan, restored in the 2nd century. To the west, the Greek theatre was transformed into an amphitheatre by the Romans. To the south-west, the Acropolis constitutes an immense archaeological reserve, whose exploration has been postponed for some time owing to the strategic nature of the site.

To the south-east, about 500 m from the sanctuary of Apollo, the agora and the Roman forum, which are well preserved, formed the centre of the civic life. This sector is characterized by the coexistence of both Greek and Roman forms of urban planning within a unified whole of very ample proportions: the Bouleuterion and Capitolium, Agora and Forum, Nomophylakion (public archives depository), and similar are placed side by side with Heroa, of which the best known is that of Battus. It is the urban centre of the ideal city; proud of its past, conscious of the continuity of its history and turned towards the future. The archaeological site of Cyrene is not limited to these three monumental complexes of the sanctuary of Apollo, the Acropolis and the Agora. Excavations have revealed the great interest of the north-eastern sector, where the grandiose ruins of the Augustan period were inhabited until the end of Cyrenian history.

Elsewhere, Cyrene preserves a necropolis complex which is numbered among the most extensive and varied of the ancient world.

Site Monuments

Ancient forum