Jews and Greeks in ancient Cyrene

1. Monarchy and Democracy

Various attempts have been made by scholars to prove that the settlement of the Greeks of Thera in Libya was preceded by an older wave of Greek settlers. Allusions to this older colonization have been found in the verses of Pindar, who tells of the encounter of the settlers of Thera with the Antenorids who had come to Libya with Helen after the capture of Troy; further in the interpretation of other texts such as the Lindus Temple Chronicle and the epic writings of Eugammon. Various philologists have sought to attribute distinctive ancient elements surviving in the Cyrenean dialect, to an earlier stratum of Greek-speaking settlers in eastern Libya.[10] Schachermeier[11] has argued, that as early as the second millennium B.C., Achaeans who had reached Libya by way of Cyrene, joined the alliance of Libyan tribes to attack Egypt.

All these conjectures have encountered the insurmountable difficulty that there is no real archaeological evidence for such an early settlement. The first conclusions of Stucchi, that finds made in recent excavations at Cyrene (1959-1961), included late Minoan pottery and a Middle or Late Minoan seal[12] have been rebutted by Boardman, who dates these objects at earliest to approximately 600 B.C.[13] Pottery from excavations at Teucheira, Bengazi, and Cyrene itself, does not precede the middle of the 7th century B.C. at earliest,[14] and that at Euhesperides begins, on present evidence, in the first quarter of the 6th.[15] At Apollonia the earliest strata appear to have dated not long after the colonization of Cyrene.[16] Libya was nevertheless known to the Homeric epic when it assumed its final form in the 8th century B.C., and the story of Korobios — as well as his rescue by a Samian vessel that touched the Isle of Plataea (see below), suggests that the coast was not unvisited by the Greeks before the Battiad colonization. Pre-Theran finds, nevertheless, are at the moment confined to a Minoan lentoid intaglio from Apollonia,[17] a Mycenaean bull-figure found in the Temple of Apollo at Cyrene,[18] and a late Minoan lentoid gem reported by Boardman from an archaic Greek stratum at Teucheira.[19]

The colonization of Libya by the Theran pioneers was among the latest colonizing projects of the Greeks, and was an isolated phenomenon. It is accordingly to be explained as arising from some specific situation[20] created, apparently, by overpopulation on the island of Thera (now Santorini). The initial impulse came from Delphi, and the influence of the Oracle on Cyrene remained strong down to the 4th century before the current era. Our chief source of knowledge of the first colonization is the fourth book of Herodotus, who transmits two parallel traditions, one Cyrenean and the other Theran. His account is supplemented by the contents of a fourth-century B.C. inscription found at Cyrene, which relates the grant of citizen-rights to a group of Therans — perhaps residents of the city — and preserves a part-account of the colonizing expedition.[21] According to the Theran tradition, Grinnos, king of the island, came to Delphi with Battus, son of Polymnestos, in his train, to consult the Oracle, whereupon the Pythia bade him found a colony in Libya, designating Battus leader. The Therans feared to obey because they knew nothing of Libya, but after a seven-years’ drought had afflicted their island, applied to Delphi and received the same response. People were then sent to Crete to seek information of the new country, and with the aid of a purple-fisher, Korobios, reached the island of Plataea,[22] off the shore of eastern Cyrenaica. They returned to Thera to announce their success, and a group of settlers was formed, consisting of one brother from every household with sons, under the leadership of Battus. Two ships set out for Plataea, but Korobios, who had remained on the island, was rescued from starvation by a Samian vessel which had been driven off course to Plataea on her way from Egypt.

So much for the Theran account. The Cyreneans, on the other hand, related that Battus, who was of Cretan origin on his mother’s side, consulted Delphi on a cure for his stammer, but was bidden by the Pythia to go to Libya as the founder of a settlement. When a Theran delegation arrived subsequently to consult the Pythia, it received the same order, whereupon two ships were despatched to Libya, one under Battus. After an unsuccessful attempt, the Therans settled on the island of Plataea. From this point, the accounts of settlement are identical in both traditions: after a two-years’ stay on Plataea and another appeal to Delphi, the settlers removed to the mainland and passed to Aziris,[23] somewhat westward, remaining there six years. Finally they were led by natives westward through the district of Irasa to Cyrene.

The Theran account evokes greater confidence than the Cyrenean in several respects. It is known that in this period Cretan maritime trade was flourishing, and the aid of Cretans to reconnoitre the Libyan coast was doubtless essential. The story of Korobios the pearl-fisher on Plataea can be understood on the analogy of the more recent practice of sponge fishers of wintering at their fishing grounds.[24] It is further notable that the version appearing in the 4th-century “Stele of the Founders” above referred to, is closer to the Theran account, in that having recorded the Cyrenean people’s resolution to grant the Therans equal citizen-rights on the authority of the oath sworn by their ancestors when the first expedition sailed, it describes the arrangements for despatching the mission as related by the Theran tradition transmitted by Herodotus, including the main clause, viz. the selection of one son from each family possessing sons. The Cyrenean tradition, on the other hand, is closer to Herodotus in one respect only — that it makes Battus himself the recipient of Apollo’s command to colonize Cyrene, but this is precisely what one would expect the Cyreneans to have told the historian.

The date of the foundation of the city has been the subject of numerous studies and discussions among scholars for many years, and we shall not become involved in this complex question. It will suffice to observe that the most recent scholar to discuss it[25] in detail in the light of old and new research alike, reaches the same conclusion as that accepted by the best scholars ever since Johannes Thrige,[26] to wit, that the Greek settlement was founded on the hill of Cyrene in 631 B.C. Yet it would seem today that the colonization was a more complex process than is reflected in Herodotus’ account; this is indicated by the testimony of the Lindus Chronicle, whose thirteenth chapter[27] relates how the Lindian sons of Pankis joined Battus to sail to Cyrene, and dedicated statues of Pallas and Heracles in her temple. Herodotus’ incident of the rescue of Koro-bios of Crete from the Isle of Plataea[28] by a ship of Samos also hints at Samian voyages along the Libyan coast in this period, the more so since the historian connects with the rescue the signing of a longstanding treaty between Cyrene and Samos. The presence of a sherd of Cameiran ware from Rhodes, dated to the late years of the 7th century,[29] in a well on the peninsula overlooking the harbour of Ptolemais (the port of Barka), where the earliest settlement may well have been established, is therefore not haphazard.[30] An Ionian sherd of the end of the 7th century comes from the area east of the Cyrenean Acropolis, while Rhodian and Cameiran wares of the second half of the same century are numerous at Teucheira[31] and also present at the early shrine of Opheles in the earliest Agora of Cyrene[32] with ample Chiote ware.[33] All this evidence points to the probability that the settlement was carried out not by one group, but was the work of a broader movement of colonization amongst whose initiators there were also elements from Rhodes, Samos and Crete.[34]

Cyrene was destined by its position to be a capital city. It lies on a defensible hill on the uppermost escarpment, commanding the second terrace (the Lusaita) to north, and its proximity to the sea ensured communication with mainland Greece and the islands. The hill itself is cut off by ravines on the west and south, and on the north by a cliff, from whose foot wells the spring of Kure, known as the Spring of Apollo, which flows over the pleasant terrace that lies between the cliff of the Acropolis and the escarpment. This terrace became in a short time the Sanctuary of the city and the site of the temples of Apollo and Artemis. The place is fortunate not only in its abundant water supply, its defensibility and its proximity to the sea, but in its ample rainfall, which at this point of the plateau is the highest in the country (600-1000 mm),[35] and in its situation as the centre of a rich red-soil plain. Those who saw Cyrene from the sea named her ‘the white shining breast’ (ἀργεννόεντι μαστῷ),[36] and no title more aptly expresses the majesty of her position and the beauty of her surroundings.

The name Cyrene (Κύράνα) belongs, as Chamoux noted,[37] to the wide class of Greek names embodying the suffix -ηνη, which means “place of”, and is annexed chiefly to roots denoting animals, plants and natural features. The poet Callimachus seems to have been right when he connected the name Cyrene with the Libyan root Κύρη, an iris,[38] the name associated with the spring that flows from the Acropolis hill. There would appear, therefore, to be no grounds for connecting the name with that of the nymph Cyrene, who was a Thessalian figure already known to Hesiod before the city’s foundation, nor does she appear among the Cyrenean deities till the end of the 4th century B.C., although Pindar in the 5th brings her from the woods of Pelion to Libya to celebrate her espousal with Apollo.[39]

It may be assumed that the small Greek settlement found its first foothold on the hill of the Acropolis,[40] and the community’s weakness and isolation no doubt compelled its pioneers to find an accommodation with the Libyan natives. Marriages with Libyan women are indeed alluded to in several later sources.[41] Some scholars have believed that Battus is a Libyan word,[42] mainly since the first king of Cyrene had another name, Aristoteles[43], and Herodotus says explicitly that Battus meant ‘king’ in Libyan.[44] This would mean that his royal status was acquired under the influence of Libyan neighbours, and that the name itself subsequently engendered the story of his stammer (βατταρίζειν, to stammer).[45] Schafer however thinks that the personal name, Battus, became a synonym of “king” among the Libyans, an idea finding support in the fact that Arkesilaos, the name alternating with Battus among the subsequent Battiad kings, also relates etymologically to the functions of a monarch.[46] Whatever the case, Herodotus emphasizes the mutual influence between the people of Cyrene and the neighbouring Libyan tribe, the Asbystae, who taught them to drive the four-horse chariot and themselves adopted Greek customs.[47] On the other hand various traditions, which are difficult to authenticate, point to conflicts between the Greeks and their Libyan neighbours in the city’s early period.[48]

Battus I was seen by the Cyreneans as the founder of the city’s cults. In this he may have been assisted by one Onymastos of Delphi,[49] whose part in the drafting of the religious law of Cyrene in its earliest period may reflect the great influence of the Oracle on the cults of the new settlement. But generally it would seem that Battus discharged the duties of king and high priest simultaneously. The steadiness of the city’s cultic development, indeed, is demonstrated by the building of the temples of Apollo and Artemis in the middle of the 6th century,[50] and of the small shrine of Opheles, a deity of healing, in the Agora during the last quarter of the 7th[51] South of the Acropolis across the Wadi bel Gadir which defends the city on that side, the temenos of Demeter may have existed already a generation after the first settlement.[52]

But if the Temple of Apollo was really erected as late as the middle of the 6th century, this is contrary to the tradition that Battus I built it, or that here there burned the fire brought from Thera,[53] since the tumulus identified with the king’s burial place was dated in the first quarter of the same century. The Temple of Apollo, nevertheless, appears to have been the ancient prytaneum of the city,[54] later transferred to the Agora. The initial identity of the prytaneum and the temple indicates the unity of the functions of government and cult characteristic of the archaic community. The building of the Temple of Apollo, which required means and technical skill, relatively soon after the settlement’s foundation, is a measure of Cyrene’s progress, of the growth of its population and the improvement of its economic condition, and the building’s erection was accompanied by that of the Temple of Artemis. The Temple of Apollo’s plan can be paralleled in the same period in Sicily, in Magna Graecia and in the Peloponnesus; but the nearest parallel is that of the Temple of Hera at Olympia.[55] The closest analogy to Artemis’ shrine is to be found in the temples of Gortyn and Prinia of Crete and in the archaic temples of Sparta.[56]

Battus I was known not only as the founder of cults, but also as the maker of the rockcut processional way described by Pindar[57] It is not clear if the road leading from the Acropolis to the Agora, where the city founder’s tomb has been allegedly found,[58] is meant, or whether it should rather be sought in the rockcut way descending from the north side of the Acropolis hill to the Sanctuary of Apollo. As Pindar, immediately after mentioning the rockcut road, continues: “And here he (Battus) lies since his death, at the end of the Agora”, scholars have inclined to the first view, and Stucchi[59] regards the matter as settled, since the King’s tomb was identified, in his opinion, at the south-east corner of the latter. It must however be observed that the road connecting the Acropolis with the Agora is not rockcut. Attention should in any case be directed to the three rockcut tombs in the northern cliff face of the Acropolis hill over the rockcut road to the Sanctuary, since according to Pindar, Battus I was buried apart (δίχα) in the Agora, whereas the other kings were laid to rest “before the palace”[60] (προ δομάτων).[61] Tombs of archaic type are also to be found in the gorge that separates the Acropolis from the city’s eastern hill, south-west of the Acropolis over Wadi bel-Gadir, and north-eastward in the Wadi el-Kenassiyeh near the road going down to Apollonia. This topographical distribution may confirm the supposition that the nucleus of the oldest settlement centred on the western hill.

Of the reign of Arkesilaos I, Battus’ successor, we only know the length — sixteen years.[62] His son Battus II, therefore, succeeded about 599 B.C. He utilized the good offices of the Delphic Oracle to bring new settlers to the city, under the slogan of “equal rights and the distribution of land”,[63] chiefly — to judge from the tribal division later introduced by the reformer Demonax of Mantinea — from Peloponnesus, Crete and the Aegean Islands. Subsequently during the 6th century, when Cyrene’s first inscribed coins appear, they elicit the influence of Samos, Rhodes and Cyprus.[64] Excavated pottery reveals trade contacts with Thera, Corinth, Athens, Laconia Rhodes, Chios, Ionia and even Syria and Sardis[65] in the 7th-6th centuries. During the 6th century the Cyrenean treasury was set up at Olympia, and if it is the smallest of the treasuries there, it is nevertheless the oldest.[66] The earliest Cyrenean coins, known from about 560, were modelled on the famous Athenian “owls”, but bore Cyrene’s symbols.[67] The form of the silphium plant appears on the obverse of all of them from the first,[68] showing that it already formed a significant if not the principal, source of the city’s wealth. There may also be evidence of early building activities on the city’s eastern hill, where, north of the later Temple of Zeus, an archaic shrine would appear to have been found by Smith and Porcher;[69] here an archaic monolithic columnshaft, closely resembling those of the 6th-century Temple of Apollo in the Sanctuary, was observed by the writer. If this hill is the hill of Zeus Lykaeos (οχθος Δίος Λυκαίου) mentioned by Herodotus,[70] it was still outside the city walls at the end of the 6th century, as the Persian army encamped on it; the connection of Zeus Lykaeos with the Peloponnesus might give reason to suppose that here an altar in the god’s honour was consecrated at the time of the second wave of settlement under Battus II.

This intensification of Greek settlement led, apparently, to the expropriation of the nearby native Libyans from their lands. They therefore formed an alliance with the Egyptian Pharaoh Apries, who marched to their aid with a strong army, but in a battle near the spring of Theste in the region of Irasa, in the year 570, the Egyptians were heavily defeated,[71] perhaps because of the Pharaoh’s reluctance to rely on his best troops, who were Greek mercenaries. As Herodotus, who wrote in the middle of the 5th century, records no Libyan tribes eastward as far as the Gilgamae of Marmarica, while in the 4th century Pseudo-Scylax[72] found Cyrene’s eastern frontier beyond Cherronesoi (in the vicinity of Ras al-Tin), it has been concluded[73] that the clash was caused by the Greek occupation of the lands to the east of the city towards Derna.

Apries’ successor was Amasis, a hellenizing ruler who signed a treaty with Cyrene, married a Cyrenean wife and sent statues of himself and of the goddess Athena, to Libya.[74] Signs of commerce between Cyrene and Egypt in this period are not wanting in the archaeological evidence: objects of gold and alabaster as well as scarabs, have occurred among the 6th-century dedications in the Temple of Artemis at Cyrene,[75] and Cyrenean coins form a high percentage among contemporary hoards found in Egypt.[76] A common political trend may indeed be traceable in the developments of Egypt and Cyrene in this period.

Cyrene was ruled between 560 and 544 by the son of Battus II, Arkesilaos II, known as “the hard” (χαλεπός).[77] According to Herodotus, Arkesilaos fell out with his brothers, who seceded to found a joint settlement with the Libyans at Barka in the west of the country. They further incited the Libyans to revolt against the King, who suffered a severe defeat in the battle of Leukon in the east of his territory, with the loss of 7.000 hoplites. The King was also at odds with his nobles, whom he put to death or drove into exile with the aid of one Learchos, the commander (according to Plutarch)[78] of a force of mercenaries obtained from Amasis. Finally Learchos slew the king and so seized power, but himself fell a victim to the vengeance of Arkesilaos’ widow Eryxo. She, aided by her brother Polyarchos, made peace with Amasis, and restored the former regime — Arkesilaos’ son, Battus III, a sickly youth, acceding to the throne.

The Egyptian alliance with Cyrene, as Schafer remarked,[79] “indicates Cyrene’s entry into the Greek and oriental political world of the eastern Mediterranean basin.” We may add that the second wave of Greek settlement which had been promoted by Delphi and by Battus II, came at a time of great changes in the Greek economy and during the floruit of the Greek tyrannies in various Greek states. This was also the period of a prolonged agrarian crisis in Greece and the islands, expressing itself in peasant indebtedness and expropriation, and in a sharp struggle between the nobility and the rising class of merchants, peasants and craftsmen. Important too, if not decisive in this period, were the introduction of coinage, and the associated intensification of trade. These conditions, which certainly influenced the Battiads, produced multitudes of land-hungry emigrants eager to exploit the new allotments promised by Battus II.

Plutarch says explicitly that Arkesilaos “became a tyrant instead of a king”,[80] and of Learchos, that he “conspired for the position of tyrant”.[81] Plutarch, it may be claimed, was influenced by events then occurring in other Greek lands, but his estimate can be shown to be accurate where contemporary Cyrenean reality was concerned.

The internal political difficulties created by Battus III’s youth and inexperience, induced the Cyreneans to appeal once again to Delphi for advice; the Oracle sent to Libya as arbiter and reformer Demonax of Mantinea.[82] By his reforms, only royal properties (τεμένεα) and the prerogatives of priesthood were left to the king, all other affairs being handed over to popular control (τὰ ἄλλα πάντα τὰ πρότερον εἶχον οὶ βασιλεὶς ἐς μέσον τοῦ δημῶ ἔθηκε). Demonax further reconstituted the citizens of Cyrene as three new tribes, the Therans and perioikoi (περίοικοι); the Peloponnesians and the Cretans; and the islanders. It is clear, therefore, that the royal powers were stringently curtailed, while the citizen-body was enlarged to include new settlers and some of the native Libyans living in the vicinity of the city (the perioikoi). Chamoux,[83] indeed, has argued that the perioikoi were Greeks, but one can hardly ignore the testimony of Herodotus, who himself visited Cyrene, and makes explicit mention of the Libyan perioikoi.[84] Among the royal properties, one can be identified, namely, the monopoly of the silphium trade, mentioned by several sources.[85] Furthermore the famous picture on the Arkesilaos kylix,[86] hardly suits the usual interpretation that silphium is here being weighed and stored: Lane rightly commented[87] that the material is not silphium, but wool.[88] All agree that the King represented, designated “Arkesilaos” on the kylix, is the second of that name.[89] Accordingly it seems probable that the king also traded in wool and agricultural produce on a wide scale.

The paintings on the Arkesilaos kylix are certainly satirical, as Sylvia Benton noted.[90] We see the king sitting and supervising the weighing and storage of wool. The animals appearing in the painting (a stork and a lizard) indicate the action as taking place at the end of the shearing, i.e. in the spring or early summer, for the flocks in Cyrenaica have to be driven to water in April or May, when they come north to the Jebel from their winter sojourn in the southern steppe.

The satirical element of the painting lies in the fact noted by Sylvia Benton, that wool is being weighed against wool, a futile process here represented, it would seem, as a criticism of the royal wool production and export overseas. The country’s sheep breeding is evidenced by various ancient sources,[91] and as the royal monopoly of silphium is known, there is no reason to deny to the royal house a decisive share in the production and marketing of wool. An analysis of the country’s structure and climatic character has shown the importance of the rhythmic seasonal transmigration of flock-owners from the southern steppe to the plateau and back; it also emphasized the antagonistic ways of life of the nomadic pastoral tribes and the settled agriculturalists and cattle-owners concentrated on the plateau. It is further clear that the seasonal northward transhumance of flockowners in summer plays a vital part in the fertilizing of the agricultural areas. In much of mainland Greece, agriculture occupies the valleys, and the flocks graze in the hills in summer; when the livestock descends to the plains in the winter, ploughing and sowing have already begun, restricting the grazing areas, hence the soil suffers from shortage of organic manure and the stock from shortage of food. The opposite is the case in Cyrenaica, where the flocks spend the winter in the steppe, and on passing to the plateau in summer find increasing areas of stubble on which to feed as the harvest progresses over the Jebel from south to north and from west to east. Hence the farmer enjoys adequate manuring of his land, and this was a vital factor for obtaining the country’s high yields in ancient times.[92] In other words, in Cyrenaica the fertility of the plateau’s arable and the seasonal flock transhumance were mutually complementary, and essential for the obtaining of surplus crops in a country that suffers quadrennial drought. The agriculture of the Plain of Barka, on the other hand, was less dependent on the seasonal transhumance of livestock. Its water supply is furnished by springs at Barka itself, and its population was initially attracted by its fertile corn-producing red soil and by the rearing of cattle and horses which could be carried on with the help of its summer fallows.[93] It was not by chance, therefore, that Barka remained an independent political unit till the end of the century.[94]

The silphium-fields were situated, apparently, mainly in the southern region. Theophrastus[95] testifies that the plant flowered when the flocks were in the same area, i.e. in the winter, and Arrian writes that though not cultivated, it was necessary to fence it to protect it from the livestock.[96] Strict supervision of the seasonal movement of the flocks was thus imperative to safeguard the silphium as a source of income, so that if the Battiads controlled this branch, it was essential to them to control flock-rearing as well. A careful balance was in fact needed between the two branches, since not only the wool-trade, but also the fertility of the arable areas of the north depended on the condition of the flocks.

There was, however, a limit to the development of this “symbiosis” of flock-rearing, silphium and the arable of the plateau. When settlement expanded on the plateau, and arable began to extend southward to the accompaniment of the pasturing of flocks whose origin was on the Jebel itself, fewer areas remained to the flocks of the southern nomads for summer-grazing, a situation that was apt to prejudice the Greek cultivator when he wished to send his own flock southward to graze the steppe. This situation would produce clashes between the nomads and the settled cultivators, and cause a decline in the organic content of the arable soils of the plateau.

The expansion of Greek settlement under Battus II led to an extension of the corn-growing link in the symbiosis of flock-rearing, silphium and arable, for we know from the text of the “Stele of the Founders” at Cyrene, that vacant tracts were distributed to the new settlers.[97] Whatever was the cause of the quarrel between Arkesilaos and his brothers, then, it would seem that the reason for the founding of Barka was a desire to perpetuate the squirelike cooperation of the nobility with the more permanently settled element among the Libyans (perhaps those who had suffered from the ἀναδασμὸς γῆς of Battus II) on the basis of local cattle-rearing and corn-growing in the Barka Plain. Furthermore the execution or exile of the aristocracy by Arkesilaos would have meant the confiscation of their estates and the growth of the royal lands. Even if we suppose that the King’s brother Polyarchus restored the former political situation,[98] we have no means of knowing if this included the restoration of the confiscated lands to the aristocrats or to their heirs, and if this was done, the process may not have been completed, for with regard to the reforms of Demonax, Herodotus tells us,[99] that only religious functions and τεμένεα were left to Battus I, meaning that additional lands till then held by the monarchy now passed into other hands.[100]

We may obtain additional information on the policy of Arkesilaos II if we assume, with other enquirers,[101] that the oracle given by Delphi, cited by Diodorus[102] as concerning the transgressions of one Arkesilaos, was directed to him, and this is credible, since Arkesilaos III gained from Delphi qualified support.[103] The oracle accused Arkesilaos II of deserting the ways of Battus II, of seizing the revenues of the state and of diminishing the piety owed to the gods. We can understand the second and third charges, if we examine the economic policy of his ally and contemporary, Amasis of Egypt. Amasis relied on a mercenary force,[104] inaugurated a property census in order to impose taxation,[105] and confiscated temple revenue.[106] His pro-hellenic policy was indeed closely bound up with the development of Egypt’s overseas trade,[107] and it was in Arkesilaos’ reign that the introduction of coinage into Cyrenaica took place,[108] meaning that her external trade began to develop more intensively, concomitantly with the royal interest in the export of wheat, wool and silphium, and, in all probability, in agricultural intensification (vines, olives and perfume-producing plants). For this the King would have exploited the sequestrated lands of the aristocracy on which to settle the mercenaries of whom Plutarch speaks;[109] lands might also have been allocated to the peasants whose farms had been lost owing to the negative effects of the introduction of coinage, i.e. of the rise in the prices of craft-products in contrast to the prices of agricultural produce, which would have remained as before.[110] We have no decisive proof of a royal policy of this sort, but it is probably in view of the general tyrannical trend of Amasis and Arkesilaos, who, it is important to recall, enjoyed till his death the support of the majority of the citizens of Cyrene, seven thousand of whom died for his cause at the battle of Leukon.[111] It is further necessary to explain who were the people who received the grant of citizenship from Demonax. Even if the restoration of the status quo by Polyarchos had not caused them to be deprived of their rights, Demonax would have found it necessary to create new Cyrenean tribes composed of the settlers who had responded to Battus’ invitation, since the losses of Leukon had to be made good, and it is clear from the language of the “Stele of the Founders” that those newcomers who had received land — or at least the Therans amongst them, — had also, in the first place, received citizenship.

Yet Arkesilaos’ situation had been difficult. On the one hand the maintenance and extension of the threefold symbiosis — flocks, silphium and arable — was rendered necessary by growing economic commercialization, and this depended on the strict safeguarding of the balance between the three branches. But the growth of the population, as a result of the settlement of mercenaries and overseas colonists, the bearers of the small intensive farm unit — led to the restriction of the pastoral areas of the plateau, and to growing hostility on the part of the nomadic elements, on whose loyalty the harvesting of the silphium depended, and on the part of the settled Libyans, whose lands were continually being diminished. The conflict between the expansion of the symbiosis and the extended colonization needed for the political strengthening and physical realization of this policy, led ultimately also to a clash with aristocratic owners of extensively farmed estates, to the battle of Leukon and to the death of Arkesilaos. Demonax found a solution to the situation by granting citizenship to the permanently settled Libyans (the περίοικοι), and by confirming or restoring the rights of the recently arrived Greek colonists. If the nobles recovered their estates at his insistence, we cannot tell; he certainly restored lands to elements whom we cannot define.

The factors disclosed by Arkesilaos’ struggle are such as to make clear the sources of the conflict. Whether or not Schafer is right in distinguishing three political elements at Cyrene, the King’s brothers and their Libyan allies, the aristocracy, and the royal family supported by the new colonists and the mercenaries,[112] the reason for the secession of the King’s brothers to found a mixed settlement with the Libyans at Barka, may well have been that it was they who supported the extensive agriculture based on corn-growing, cattle-rearing and horse-rearing, carried on in conjunction with the permanently settled natives, whereas the King sought to develop a more intensified cultivation and the more efficient utilization of land.

It is easy to suppose that the settlement of newcomers by Battus II under the slogan of “the distribution of land”(ἀναδασμὸς γῆς),[113] which was not in this case a revolutionary programme, led in course of time to a demand on the part of the Cyrenean peasants for the cancellation of debts (ἀποκοπὴ χρέων), but of this we have no confirmation. The fact that Arkesilaos III, son of Battus III, in his revolt against Demonax’ reforms, mobilized mercenaries from overseas by the slogan of “the distribution of land”, has caused Schafer to deduce that his action was directed against the Cyrenean peasantry whose farming had remained backward and did not utilize the full potentialities of their lands. But it is unnecessary to read into Arkesilaos III’s formula more than a demagogic slogan meant to attract mercenaries, and it is preferable to distinguish between the extensive farming of the aristocracy, with which Arkesilaos was struggling, and the plight of the smallholding peasantry.[114]

Did Demonax inaugurate democracy in Cyrene? The institution of three phylae meant, no doubt, an expansion of the citizen-body in harmony with the new situation created by the rise of population under Battus II, nor need the accuracy of Herodotus be doubted when he writes that “Demonax placed all other affairs in the hands of the people.”[115] But the question is, in what measure did “the people” include all the free inhabitants of the country? — and to this we have no answer. All that can be said is, that a sharing of citizen-rights without reference to ownership of land is hardly credible in the conditions of the period.

One event in the life of Cyrene perhaps belongs to the reign of Battus III (544-530), namely, the erection of the Temple of Zeus, the city’s greatest shrine, on the eastern hill.[116] The date of the building, one of the largest temples in Greece, ranking with the Parthenon and Temple “G” at Selinus in Sicily, is a subject of controversy. Inscriptions evidence that it existed in the 5th century,[117] and its first scientific excavator, Pesce[118] dated it to that century. Dinsmoor[119] on the other hand was of the opinion that it was built shortly after 540 B.C. and Chamoux put the erection at about 520.[120] The column-contractions of the peristasis, indeed, suggest the earlier date.

The size of the project, at all events, is appropriate to the period of renascence that may well have begun with the reforms of Demonax, and perhaps symbolized the renewed harmony (ὁμόνοια) of the Cyrenean polity under the protection of Zeus, the guardian of social justice. If this suggestion is correct, the chronological limits for the Temple’s construction would fall between 550 and 514. Between 550 and 525 the small shrine of Opheles (a healing deity who bestowed prosperity) was rebuilt in enlarged form; in the last quarter of the century the Agora was lengthened from east to west, and a new portico erected along its north side. By this time, apparently, the small temple of Apollo already existed at the south-western corner of the area, and the west limit of the Agora was enclosed by a new portico.

The son of Battus III, Arkesilaos III, who reigned from 530/525-514,[121] attempted to set aside the political settlement of Demonax, but faced with revolt, fled to Samos, while his mother Pheretimé found refuge with Evelthon the ruler of Salamis in Cyprus.[122]

Meanwhile Cambyses had gained control of Egypt and Arkesilaos, inclining like other Greek kings and absolute rulers to rely on Persian support, became his vassal. Gathering an army, after a consultation with Delphi, he reconquered his kingdom and immolated his aristocratic opponents by burning down their refuge, “the great tower of Aglomachus”. Thereupon, realizing that his deed ran counter to the explicit warning of the Pythia, “not to bake the pots in the kiln, but to send them beyond the frontiers, but if you do the first, do not enter a place surrounded on two sides with water” — transferred his quarters to Barka, ruled by the Libyan Aladdeir, whose daughter he had wedded.[123] His mother Pheretime remained at Cyrene and there exercized rule,[124] but Arkesilaos and his father-in-law were assassinated by their enemies at Barka, forcing Pheretime to flee to Egypt. Her flight brought about the intervention of Persia (514/513); Barka was besieged and taken by the Persian general Aryandes, and its inhabitants deported to Bactria.[125] It is not clear from the existing account whether Cyrene suffered from the Persian expedition; on this Herodotus is at variance with Menecles of Barka, who wrote of a Persian occupation. Decapitated statues and damaged monuments dated in the mid-6th century B.C., found in a quarry east of the present city, may indeed be the result of Persian vandalism.[126]

From this time onward and perhaps till the end of this dynasty, the Battiads ruled Cyrene as Persian vassals, and as early as the reign of Darius son of Hystaspes (i.e. from 519 approximately) Egypt received from Cyrene, Barka, and the neighbouring regions of Libya, a tribute of 800 talents and 120,000 artabae of com.[127]

It is only at this point that the relationships between the Cyrenean cities and Cyrene itself begin to become a little clearer. Barka was founded, as we have seen, in the reign of Arkesilaus II,[128] but archaeological evidence shows that a settlement already existed near her harbour (the future Ptolemais, today Tolmeita) from the end of the 7th century.We further know of a Libyan king at Barka, and that the town paid its own tribute to Darius, hence it was a distinct political unit, which began to strike its own coins in the later years of the 6th century.[129] These cease, apparently, with the Persian capture and the subsequent vengeance of Pheretime, but reappear after a short period under Battus IV;[130] by the end of the 5th century Barka is the country’s principal city.[131] In 484 another Persian attack was made upon the town by the Persian general Arsamis. Several historians have seen the event as an erroneous duplication of the Persian siege after the death of Arkesilaos III,[132] but Polyaenus knew of two such attacks, and the alleged second coincided with a revolt in Egypt. Robinson, moreover, noted another cessation of Barka’s coinage at this time, and that when it reappears about the year 460, it bears a resemblance to the coinage of Cyrene.[133]

The city of Euesperitae (east of the present Bengazi) had existed from the early 6th century on the evidence of pottery; in the late 5th it had been attacked (according to Herodotus)[134] by the Persians during the first campaign against Barka. One view, relying on the general similarity of the governing institutions of Euesperitae to those of Thera and Cyrene as revealed by an inscription,[135] holds that the town was founded from the latter. Her first coins appear in about 480, when according to the symbols they bear, Euesperitae was allied with Cyrene.[136] Teucheira (today Tocra), situated on the coast between the port of Barka and Euesperitae, on the other hand, shows pottery from the late 7th century. Herodotus calls her “a town of Barka”,[137] but the information of the scholiast on Pindar, that this was a Cyrenean foundation,[138] would seem more correct. Her coins, extant from the first half of the 5th century, nevertheless, show an alliance with Barka,[139] and this may have been the source of Herodotus’ statement.

Cyrene in this period shows signs of economic prosperity. In about 525 human figures appear on her coins,[140] which begin to elicit Athenian influence. In 500 approximately, i.e. under Battus IV, the first inscribed coins are struck. Contemporarily the façade of the Temple of Apollo was readorned with Parian marble, to judge from the Gorgon akroterion found there;[141] this figure is perhaps to be connected with the similar figure now to be seen on the city’s coins.[142] Contemporary building activity in the south-east of Cyrene may be evidenced by a similar akroterion found in the area of the Agora.[143]The country’s Greek population was certainly growing at this period, if only due to the settlement of the mercenaries imported by Arkesilaos III; the head of the god Ammon, which begins to figure on Cyrenean and Barkan coins about 500,[144] hints at the drawing closer of connections with the cult of the Oasis of Ammon (Siwa) along the desert routes. Herodotus, at all events, knew of a colony of Samians settled at the Oasis of Hargiyeh between Ammon and Egypt in the middle of the 5th century,[145] and it is hard to explain its raison d’etre except on the assumption that they were engaged in the caravan trade. In the same years Pindar dedicated to the god Ammon verses which were inscribed on stone at the Oasis, apparently in the year 442 B.C.[146]

Among the finds from the Temple of Artemis, objects dated not later than about 500 reflect trade connections with Rhodes, Crete, perhaps also with Phoenicia and Central Africa,[147] while the gold objects from the same deposit point to a sound, even a prosperous, economic situation. On the criterion of the distribution of her coin-hoards in other countries at this time, Cyrene holds eighth place after Aegina, Athens, Thasos, Chios, Corinth, Naxos and Paros, and precedes several Greek centres of no small prominence, such as Miletus, Samos and Cyprus.[148] The distribution, therefore, furnishes an indication of the importance of Cyrenean trade. Yet it is not till the second half of the 5th century (c. 450)[149] that the city began to circulate gold coins,[150] since only then, it would seem, was access obtained to a supply of this precious metal. The problem of Cyrene’s trade along the desert routes will be discussed later.

The sources for Cyrene’s history in the 5th century are not abundant; even the evidence for the existence of the two last Battiad kings is slight, though it need not be rejected. Nothing is known of Battus IV, unless to him can be ascribed the repair of the Temple of Apollo and the striking of the city’s first inscribed coins. He appears to have died round about the year 470.[151] Arkesilaos IV, by contrast, was the subject of Pindar’s verse as victor in the chariot races at Delphi in 462[152] and at Olympia in 460.[153] Some have compared his court to the magnificent courts of the Sicilian tyrants;[154] it was apparently luxurious and cultured, to judge by the royal participation in the athletics of the mainland and by the presence of the poet Pindar. The statue described by Pausanias,[155] showing Battus crowned by the nymph Cyrene, riding in a chariot driven by Libya, seems to have been set up by Arkesilaos IV, as it was the work of the sculptor Amphion of Cnossos, active between 450 and 400 approximately.[156] In the view of most scholars Arkesilaos fell out with his nobles, some of whom he exiled — this is their interpretation of Pindar’s words[157] — but the view is disputed. It is known however that the King was forced to strengthen his power with the help of mercenaries brought from without, whom he settled at Euesperitai.[158] This was not the present Bengazi, which is on the site of the hellenistic city; the original site has been identified by air photography and excavation among the salt-lagoons near the northern shore, east of the present city.[159] The circumstances of Arkesilaos’ death are wrapped in obscurity, but the scholiast on Pindar[160] tells us that his enemies put and end to his life, and his son is known to have been killed at Euesperitai.[161]

The coins of Cyrene might reveal to us at least as much as the written records, were we able to determine the relationship between those of the period between 480 and 435 and the two last Battiad sovereigns. Robinson held[162] that the last of the tetradrams datable between 480 and 450, and the first tetradrams of the period 450-435, were to be associated with the period after the end of the monarchy, and that this applied equally to the coins of Cyrene, Barka and Euesperitae. On this view, Arkesilaos IV reigned from 475 to 450, and his coins are the first tetradrams bearing the head of Ammon, which reveal a complete artistic break with the past. A remarkable tetradram published by Jenkins[163] bearing an exceptionally fine head of Ammon in the late archaic style, is dated by Jenkins to 470-460, and thought by him to mark Cyrene’s new independent orientation after the Persian defeat at Plataea. Pindar, indeed, gives the impression[164] that in 462 Arkesilaos was still a young man, yet when Herodotus wrote in the middle of the century his rule had ended, since the historian had heard the Delphic prophecy[165] made allegedly to Arkesilaos III, that the Battiads would reign unto the eighth generation. This can with difficulty be reconciled with the scholiast’s statement on the Fourth Pythiad, that the dynasty ruled two hundred years (i.e. till circa 439), but his calculation may have depended on too formal an interpretation of the prophetic words “eight generations” (ὀκτὼ γεννεάς). Jenkins’ tetradram would indeed support an earlier end of the Battiad dynasty. Archaeological authority for the date of the end of Battiad rule is nevertheless found by Chamoux[166] in a bronze head discovered near the Temple of Apollo, representing, he thinks, Arkesilaos IV himself, as it wears a diadem and adorned the temple before its rebuilding in the mid-4th century B.C. The style of the portrait dates it with considerable precision to 440 B.C.,[167] which would be difficult to reconcile with the coin-evidence.

It may be supposed that the two last kings of Cyrene still inclined to Persia. A Delphic response as transmitted by Diodorus Siculus[168] has been considered by several scholars[169] to belong to the time of Battus IV, since in demanding the settlement of Libya it emphasizes the royal authority of the suppliant, who appears as Battus Aristoteles. Parke therefore believes that we have here a statement meant to strengthen Battus IV in a time of political difficulty. If this is so we must interpret the resistance of Barka to the Persians in 484 as a revolt against the King. The Egyptians rose against Persia in the same year[170] and in 462, when they rose a second time, they received Libyan aid.[171] It is at least known that Arkesilaos IV planned a campaign in Egypt that year,[172] but whether to aid the rebels or the Persians, we do not know. Whatever the case, when the remnants of the Athenian expedition returned from Egypt through Cyrene in 457,[173] they were not molested, showing that by this time Persian control of Cyrene had ended. Chamoux indeed believes,[174] like Jenkins, that the new coin-types which appear in the city after 470 indicate the state’s independence and its liberation from the Persian yoke.

If we attempt to summarize the little information we possess on Arkesilaos IV, we may see him as an energetic autocrat, strengthening his power with new colonization, drawing closer his ties with the desert oases, increasing the circulation of his coinage, maintaining relations with the Greek sacred centres (Delphi, Olympia, Athens), claiming rule over the other cities of Cyrenaica,[175] a patron of culture, and a breeder of thoroughbred horses. In the first half of the 5th century the north portico of the Agora was extended, and a heroon built over the tomb of Battus I. In the same period the nearby shrine of Opheles was replaced by a temple.[176]

How was it that the Battiad monarchy held its ground as an active political regime when monarchy had died out almost completely over most of Greece? The geographical isolation of Cyrene certainly helped to delay in some measure the state’s social development, and its strong Dorian element probably displayed a conservative attitude in favour of monarchy, like its Spartan kindred. Persian influence certainly prolonged Battiad rule beyond its natural term. Social factors also had their effect; relations with the Libyans encouraged the perpetuation of a monarchy for reasons of prestige. Moreover Cyrene possessed broader areas of fertile soil for expansion than most of the states of mainland Greece, and this delayed the development of the small peasant as member of a compact aggressive group, or the crystallization of a hoplite class to claim its share of power. Cyrene further retained its economic independence in the sphere of food-supply to a greater extent than most of the Greek states, and as an exporter of agricultural produce could purchase from overseas the crafts products and luxuries which she needed. This situation was apt to delay the development of domestic crafts. Heichelheim rightly observed[177] that the tyrannies of mainland Greece could not maintain themselves for long because of the limitedness of their economic bases; the Bat-tiads, for their part, disposed of considerable areas.

But a time came when Battiad policy contradicted itself. Trade expanded beyond the limits within which it could be conducted as a royal monopoly; colonization reached its natural bounds of development within the existent settled area and the demand of the kings for colonists who would support their rule led to the growth of a population whose economy endangered the existence of large aristocratic estates. Thus a constellation of political forces was created which hastened the end of the monarchy. When Persian support was removed, the regime collapsed, never to recover.

The written sources for Cyrenean history from the end of the Battiad dynasty to the rise of Alexander the Great are few and fragmentary. Heraclides of Pontus[178] places the death of Battus son of Arkesilaus IV “after the foundation of a democratic regime”, but there is no information on its nature or details. As a completely democratic regime was not introduced till after 401, and was preceded by a struggle between the aristocracy and the demos, we must assume that a restricted democracy was in power, not participated in by all classes of the people. It is here relevant to note, however, that some time in the second half of the 5th century, apparently, the west portico of the Agora was replaced by a building for public assembly.[179] The steles of the Cyrenean Demiurgi,[180] which appear first in the middle of the 5th century, moreover, make public the accounts of an administrative body of the state responsible to the city and therefore reflect democratic procedure. It may be assumed that the royal properties were now entrusted to the city’s elected officials, who included the demiurgi, for they dispose of considerable revenues from agricultural lands which defrayed, inter alia, the expenses of various cults (see below, p. 87). It may also be supposed that the royal priestly functions now passed into the hands of a High Priest elected by the state; such a priest, at any rate was at a later period annually appointed and gave his name to the year (ἱερεὺς πώνυμος).[181]To what extent the city reverted to the organization inaugurated by Demonax, it is impossible to know, least of all because his reforms are a subject of controversy.[182] It is difficult to solve this problem on the basis of information on the magistracies of an earlier period, although ephors are known to have existed in Thera and in Crete.[183] On the other hand, the archons and council (βουλή) referred to at Barka[184] in connection with the events of 484, might suggest the renewal of democracy in that town.

In the middle of the 5th century the tetradrams of Cyrene, Barka and Euesperitae manifest technical and artistic progress,[185] perhaps indicating the end of the monarchy. These coins are imitated closely by the rulers of Lycia between about 450 and 430,[186] and the reason for the link may have been the Cyrenean import of silver bullion from Lycia. Before 435 Cyrene was minting gold coins, which bore the symbols both of Cyrene and Barka, thus declaring an alliance between the two states.[187] It is clear that Cyrenean trade had gained considerable impetus with the fall of the Battiads, and this was expressed in these years by her transfer from the Attic to the Asiatic monetary standard, thus strengthening Cyrene’s economic ties with Egypt and the eastern Aegean, more especially with Rhodes and Samos.[188]

Arkesilaos appears to have entertained relations with Athens,[189] but after his death, on the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, the Cyrenean cities, as Dorians, presumably inclined to Sparta, but did not intervene in the hostilities, although the Spartan Gylippus received aid from Cyrene in 413, and himself helped Euesperitae to repel a Libyan attack.[190]

Barka had manifested signs of independence under the monarchy, and had begun to pursue an independent policy from about 450; in the treaty between her and Cyrene she was the senior partner, and her decisions seem to have been decisive. Teucheira was subject to her in the middle of the century,[191] a relationship expressed in the coins of both cities.[192] Pseudo-Scylax too, writing in the mid-4th century, distinguishes between the cities subject to Cyrene and those subject to Barka,[193] and in later literature (Aeneas Tacitus, Titian, Ptolemy) the people of Barka are referred to as a separate entity. This division was doubtless rooted in geographical factors, principally in the eroded and broken waterless area separating the two cities. In the years after 435 Barka’s coinage develops steadily, whereas Cyrene’s is static, and her position would seem to have been one of depression and inferiority in those years. Nevertheless, as the general artistic level of the coins rose throughout the country, a growing uniformity is traceable, to be interpreted as the result of intensified freedom of movement between the urban centres. The ancient highway that leaves Cyrene south-westward for Zavia Beida (Balagrae) is quarried in the rock and lined on both sides by rockcut tombs of the 5th and 4th centuries.

In the year 401 we hear of civil war at Cyrene.[194] One Ariston seized power, slew fifty aristocrats, and drove out the rest. They found refuge at Euesperitae, which still maintained, apparently, an aristocratic regime, and with the aid of 3,000 men of Messene recruited by Euesperitae to fight the Libyans,[195] who had heavily defeated the city, advanced upon Cyrene. After a severe but indecisive battle, the two factions arrived at a compromise and set up a joint polity. This account means that a moderate constitution existed in 401, participated in by both the aristocracy and the people. But Aristotle informs us[196] that a constitution modelled on the Athenian polity of Cleisthenes had been established, and had been the occasion of civil conflict (στάσις) in the city. The source for this, the Politics, was completed in 336, and it is known that the citizens of Cyrene had appealed to Plato to draw up a constitution for them;[197] Plato died in 346. The Stele of the Founders, which commemorates a decision of the Cyrenean demos to grant citizenship to resident or visiting Therans,[198] evidences a fully democratic constitution in the first half of the century. In the same period Cyrene was participating actively in the Panathenaic games, a clear sign of her democratic sympathies, the earliest of the known panathenaic amphorae found in Cyrenaica dating from the year 373.[199] Between the years 435-375 the city’s coinage decreases, perhaps as a result of her internal conflicts; contemporarily Euesperitae was under attack from her Libyan neighbours; further, in 430/29 the plague spread from Greece to Libya,[200] and it is to be assumed that her cities suffered accordingly. But in the neighbourhood of 375 there is a change; the coins of Cyrene become more numerous, gold pieces appear in abundance, and the artistic level of the currency reaches its highest point.[201] It may accordingly be suggested that the Cleisthenic constitution was inaugurated at Cyrene in the first half of the 5th century, probably between 375 and 373.[202] Such a date is at least appropriate to the commencement of the building of the Treasury of Cyrene at Delphi, set by Bousquet approximately in the year 373. (See p. 41).

Aristotle’s information of the Cleisthenic character of Cyrene’s democratic constitution poses the historian a number of problems: What were the conditions which produced it, and what the economic situation which it reflects? The problem is not simplified by the numerous differences between the history of Athens and the history of Cyrene. Does the introduction of a Cleisthenic democracy point to similar conditions and was the constitution really like the Athenian?

Aristotle says explicitly that the aims of both reforms were the same — to wit, the complete fusion of all elements of the population and the dissolution of long-standing societies (συνήθειαι) — meaning the cult associations with political aims. As he mentions the increase of the number of phratriai (φρατρίαι)[203] i.e. the organized groups of families of common kinship, — who together formed, at least in ancient times, the tribe (φυλή) — and says that Cleisthenes did not alter their structure in Attica, — we must suppose that in Cyrene their number was enlarged.[204] Newman[205] and Wade Gery[206] on the other hand, interpret Aristotle’s statement, in the light of his information in the Athenaion Politeia[207] — that the increase of the tribes referred to in VI, 4 related only to Athens, and not to Cyrene. This conclusion is accepted apparently by Siebert[208] citing further in support of it the mention of a τριφύλια in the Cyrenean Cathartic Law of the late 4th century.[209] The conclusion may be unimpeachable in terms of an understanding of the texts, but seems unrealistic in terms of the situation in Cyrene which can be assumed on the basis of the country’s social and economic development.

One may wonder, indeed, how far an increase of phratriai is reconcilable with a non-increase of the tribes. Theoretically it is, but there may be other evidence in favour of the view that the number of the Cyrenean tribes actually was increased in the 4th century. Cleisthenes’ Attic reform attained its aim by giving the tribes a new structure, each one deriving its composition from the inhabitants of three demes each located in a different trittys of Attica. The tribes thus ceased to have local political significance and the three old divisions of Attica with their individual political family interests lost their importance. The Cyrenean reform, on the other hand, would have been designed to adapt the constitution to the changes of population that had taken place since the inauguration of the democracy of Demonax, and these must have been considerable in view of the settlement of new elements by Arkesilaos II and IV, and the new groups of merchants and craftsmen doubtless attracted to the country by the growth of Cyrenean trade. It may moreover be supposed that Arkesilaos IV, in his desire to increase the population, had not hesitated to grant privileges and right of residence to newcomers. If so, the old tribes constituted by Demonax according to the origin of their members would no longer have corresponded to the composition of the free population.

Cleisthenes established the principle that the tribes no longer built their membership according to locality or origin.[210] On the other hand, the demes, which were the elective units, he made into organs of local administration. The Cyrenean democracy of 375 must have enlarged the citizen-body, the more so as Cyrene was a country of immigration and absorption to a greater degree than Attica. This is evidenced by the increase of the phratriai, whose function was, inter alia the initiation of the newborn infant, the bride and the young adolescent into the community. On the other hand we hear of no Cyrenean demes on the Athenian model, nor has any term parallel to the γενή of Samos, or the demes of Kalymna and Cos, come down to us. This might lead us to ask whether the Cyrenean tribes themselves did not become geographical and administrative units, as occurred at Mantineia and Elis, with whom Cyrene had close relationships? We have no answer to this question at present.

There remains the problem, whether the three Demonactan tribes were superseded by a greater number. According to lines 15-16 of the “Stele of the Founders”, Therans obtaining Cyrenean citizenship are to be registered[211] in a phyle of their own in the original Demonactan tribe of Therans and perioikoi, according to Siebert.[212] Yet Ptolemy Lagos’ new Cyrenean constitution, given at the end of the 4th century,[213] established a boule of 500, and five strategoi in addition to Ptolemy himself, implying the existence of five phylai.[214] Five strategoi are indeed independently attested in the 4th century (see n. 213). As Ptolemy’s constitution restricted citizenship to owners of an annual income of 2000 drachmae, it may be assumed that the citizen-body of the Cleis-thenic constitution was larger. For this reason, the word τριφύλια recorded in the Cathartic Law of much the same period[215] may be no more than a reference to an archaic building whose name reflected an ancient division long obsolete. On the other hand, the “Stele of the Founders” further records that each new citizen under the democracy was registered in a tribe, a patra (= phratria) and a hetairea (ἐτοαρήα).[216] The nature of the last is unknown; such are recorded at Thera,[217] and in the Dorian cities of Crete they are identical with the phratriai,[218] but as units smaller than the phratriai they seem to be peculiar to Cyrene.[219] They originated as groups of kindred serving together in war,[220] but as Aristotle writes that the aim of the “ Cleisthenic” reform was to break up the social-political clubs (συνήθειαι), the Cyrenean hetaireai must have had a different character. The Therans, it should be observed, are incorporated among nine hetaireai, — presumably each tribe had this number, — which might be interpreted as favouring a division of each tribe into three parts. Theoretically, if the democratic constitution of Cyrene was really Cleisthenic, the entire city territory would have been divided into three or more districts, each furnishing a section of one phyle. It is indeed to be remarked, that geographically the Cyrenaican Jebel does fall into three parts — the coastal plain, the Lusaita, and the uppermost plateau.[221]

In the “Stele of the Founders” the general citizen assembly (ἐκκλησία) is the legislative body. Five strategoi are recorded in the same century,[222] and the ephors figure in the Ptolemaic constitution somewhat later.[223] They may be assumed to have existed earlier in view of the post’s antiquity, for it existed in Thera; there are five under Ptolemy. The steles of the Demiurgi record three such magistrates, who officiated from the 5th to the 2nd century B.C. at least, but are unmentioned in the Ptolemaic law. This need not mean that they were unimportant under the Cleisthenic constitution. Quite the contrary; it suggests that these were the most important magistrates in the democratic regime; at Mantineia and Elis they headed the boule. An important Cyrenean inscription of the 4th century,[224] defines the functions of the demiurgi in a given situation and adds that they are discharged by these magistrates in the cities (of Libya), by the hellenodikai in the Temple of Zeus Olympios (i.e. in Olympia), by the amphiktyons at Delphi, and by the hieromnamones in the Temple of Zeus Lykaios (the Lyceum of Arcadia). The functions concerned include the recording of claims arising from seizure of the property of one city by another as an act of reprisal in war time; hence it may well be that the demiurgi of Cyrene handled not only the revenue from the sacred lands but the city’s financial affairs as a whole.[225]

We have no details of political events in the other cities of Cyrenaica in this period. Euesperitae, despite its Cyrenean connections, had welcomed the aristocratic refugees in 401, and therefore can be assumed to have had an aristocratic form of government. An inscription of the 4th century[226] evidences that the city was governed by ephors, a gerousia and a bole (sic), and as the demos is not mentioned, and the resolution is brought before the Bole by the first two instances, the city appears to have been under aristocratic or oligarchic rule, although in the view of Fraser[227] the inclusion of the Bole points to a democracy. The regime perhaps lay between the two extremes.

Barka, according to her coins, was still independent, and to judge by her alliance with the Egyptian Akoris (383)[228] she was still exercizing an independent foreign policy; between 435 and 375 Barka is the dominant member of a partnership with Cyrene, but her coins cease in about 375, and Cyrene is the ruling partner henceforth.

Cyrene’s renewed activity on the inauguration of her democracy in the second quarter of the 4th century is expressed in many ways, nor does archaeology leave any doubt that the political change liberated her creative powers. For the first time there are increasingly numerous inscriptions to demonstrate the growth of means and the spread of literacy. The allusion to legal procedures common to all the Libyan cities in the matter of reprisals is a symptom of growing unity among the country’s towns. Successful military action is indicated not only by a contemporary campaign to the Syrtic region and the erection of a treasury from the plunder[229] — but also by the building of a similar treasury (called by the Italians the “Strategeion”) in the Sanctuary of Apollo by three strategoi of Cyrene. This treasury is situated close to the wall supporting the upper terrace of the Sanctuary, and contained the plunder of a war whose aim is not stated.[230] The building’s period is defined between the middle of the 4th century[231] and its last decades. In 373 approximately the building of the Treasury of Cyrene was begun in the Delphic sanctuary, but interrupted by the battle of Chaeroneia (338). Built of Pentelic and Parian marble, it was designed to demonstrate, in the view of its investigator, the mathematical theories of Theodorus of Cyrene and of his pupil Plato.[232]

The institution of democracy broke up the factions that divided the city, united the people and directed their attention to the capital. Stucchi thinks that the city’s street-plan north of the main street joining the Acropolis with the Agora, originated with a lay-out along the original field-divisions in the middle of the 6th century B.C.[233] This view must presumablyt now supersede the conclusion of D. Buttle[234] and that of the writer,[235] based on the orientation of the Temple of Apollo (previously thought to be of Demeter) as rebuilt in the 4th century B.C. in the south-west corner of the Agora, that the present visible town plan originated in the same century. Stucchi bases his 6th-century date on the orientation of altars Ei and 2 and Sacellum Ei of Opheles, also of the first peribolos of the Temple of Apollo in the Agora, and its relation to the main street (the σκυρωτὰ ὁδός). It should nevertheless be noted that the insulae to the north of the Agora were observed by Stucchi himself[236] to resemble in measurement those of Priene (4th century B.C.) rather than those of Olynthos (5th century B.C.).

In the 4th century, at any rate, the city was greatly embellished; in the Agora, the heroon of Battus was replaced by a roofed structure,[237] and the Agora enlarged northward by heavy walls, its northern portico being replaced twice in rapid succession.[238] In the Sanctuary of Apollo, after an earthquake had caused the collapse of the cliff overlooking the area from the south in the middle of the century, the Temple of Apollo was rebuilt and enlarged. The archaic shrine was enclosed by a new wall and encompassed by an outer crepis and peristasis of great Doric columns. The altar of Apollo was encrusted with Parian marble donated by Philon son of Annakeris, whose father had redeemed the philosopher Plato from slavery in 383.[239] In the course of the second half of the century the upper terrace of the Sanctuary was laid out, while its low dividing wall (δρύφακτος), and probably at the same time the retaining wall of the lower terrace, were constructed.[240] The theatre in the west of the sanctuary was built in approximately the same period, to judge by the reuse within the structure of triglyphs from the archaic temple;[241] it may have superseded an older structure of timber.[242] The beautiful marble door of the Temple of Apollo in the Agora is stylistically dated to the same century. Furthermore, the seated figure of Zeus Lykaeos which appears on the city’s coins at the end of the century[243] is perhaps to be interpreted that the Temple of Zeus on the eastern hill now received a similar image, since the head of an acrolithic statue of this type found in the temple was thought by its discoverers to be a smaller second-century copy of an original wrought by a sculptor of the school of Pheidias.[244] The building activity described, indeed finds additional expression in the increasing abundance of Cyrene’s gold coins, to which allusion has already been made, and in their outstanding beauty and variety. The appearance of the names of moneyers[245] on coinage from the beginning of the century, and of masons’ marks on the masonry of the dryphaktos of the upper sanctuary terrace, are signs of a technical and professional development characteristic of a commercial democracy.

Moneyers’ names are known earlier on the coins of Barka, and the appearance of the name Allat(eir) between 435-322[246] may be interpreted to mean that noble families were taking their share in the work of minting. Cyrene’s influence on the Libyans of her neighbourhood finds expression in the imitations of Cyrenean staters found in Egypt.[247]

We have noted the finds of Panathenaic prize amphorae in Cyrenaica, which evidence the city’s rapprochement with Athens in her democratic period. Ferrabino interpreted the granting of citizen-rights to Theran residents[248] as a first step on the part of Cyrene towards a political rapprochement with Athens’ renewed maritime league, of which Thera was a member.[249] The League was reestablished in 376, shortly before the year we have thought marked the establishment of Cyrene’s “Cleisthenic” democracy. Whether or not Ferrabino was right, the kindred feeling with Athens found material expression later under the rule of Ophelias, when 10,000 Athenians who had been deprived of their citizenship migrated to Cyrene.

A difficult problem is posed by the alleged war between Cyrene and Carthage. Until the Italian excavations carried out at Cyrene between 1924 and 1931, authority for this was to be found only in the works of Sallust,[250] Valerius Maximus,[251] and Pomponius Mela,[252] and as all these sources mention the event only in connection with the mythical story of the Philaenan brothers,[253] and there is no parallel Greek source, Robinson and others have rejected its authenticity. Nor does the seabattle said by Servius[254] to have been fought between Barka and Carthage find confirmation in other sources. The possibility of such a collision is nevertheless entirely reasonable on general grounds, granted the assumption that Cyrene was interested in the desert trade-routes which debouch upon the Syrtic Gulf, where the emporia appear to have lain under Punic control from the end of the 6th century. It is necessary therefore to investigate whether the desert routes played any part in Cyrenean commerce in this period.

The ancient evidence for Carthage’s trade through the ports of the Syrtis is very vague.[255] The harbours themselves are not mentioned prior to Polybius, who writes of them in connection with the treaty signed between Rome and Carthage in 509 B.C. Apart from the trade in gems,[256] there is no allusion to products of Central Africa being brought through the Syrtic ports between Herodotus’ time and the 2nd century B.C., and Pseudo-Scylax’ report in the 4th century of the export of ivory, skins and gold from the Atlantic coast, hints only by its silence that the ports of the Syrtis may then have been entirely under Carthaginian control.[257] The whole assumption of the existence of a commerce between the north African coast and the centre of the continent, indeed, is based on the reference to emporia, on the supposition that the caravan routes have not altered in the course of time, on references to various wares from Central Africa used chiefly by the Romans, and on medieval analogies.[258] There is, indeed, no doubt that elephants from inland were exported by Lepcis Magna.[259] Yet Hey-wood writes:[260] “No ancient source states that there was such a trade”. Nor does the outlook of recent geographers incline to assume links between Cyrene, the desert routes and Central Africa in ancient times. Cary, for example,[261] affirms that “Cyrenaica in ancient times was never the terminal region of a caravan route”; Goodchild, citing his opinion,[262] adds,[263] that the road from Aujila to Ajedabia and Bengazi could not have been as important to trade as was that traversing Fezzan to Tripoli. They are followed by Burney and Hey,[264] also by Jones and Little;[265] Burney and Hey state that there is no sign of an ancient north-south route coming from the Jebel into the Desert, and remark that the existing road from Aujila through Kufra and Tibesti was opened up only at the beginning of the 19th century.

So much for the arguments against Cyrenean connections with the desert routes, or at least against direct links. It may however be argued that Cyrene aspired to communication not through Aujila and Fezzan, but through the Oasis of Ammon, Fezzan and the Gulf of Syrtis; the historical and numismatic evidence, indeed, points in that direction. In the Fourth Pythiad of Pindar echoes are heard of an interest of the Cyrenean monarchy in the Syrtic region, and under Arkesilaos IV ties were formed between Cyrene and the Oasis of Ammon. Herodotus[266] knew of Ammon salt; he had heard the story of the journey of some Nasamonean Libyans into Central Africa, from Cyreneans who had visited the Oasis.[267] Rhys Carpenter[268] has shown that this journey was carried out along the desert route linking Thebes, Hargiyeh, Siwa (Ammon), Aujila and Fezzan, whence it turned south across the mountains of Tibesti to the region of Bodele north-east of Lake Chad. This route, he observed, is a very ancient road for the transport of salt. Herodotus also knew something of the settlements of the Libyan coast as far as the Isle of Jerba near the Syrtis, but his knowledge of the shoreline west of there was vague in the extreme.[269] This would seem to mean that the Carthaginians held the Syrtic harbours at the time, and that they were closed to Greek trade. In 503 the former expelled the Spartan expedition that had seized the Cynips region on the same coast in an attempt to settle there.[270] The situation, at any rate, is such as to explain Cyrene’s interest in the Oasis of Ammon, since it stood on the route linking Egypt with the land of the Garamantes (Fezzan) and with Central Africa, and its use would have avoided the Syrtic route by going further south.

Whatever the case, gold coins appear in Cyrene in the middle of the 5th century, and in the first half of the 4th their distribution area widens.[271] In this period the city coinage bears figures of the palm tree, the prancing horse, and the horse’s head, which appear to reflect Carthaginian influence; from 375 approximately Carthaginian bronze coins are circulating in Cyrenaica, frequently restruck by Euesperitae.[272] It is therefore difficult not to see in these phenomena an expression of commercial contacts with the Syrtic region which lies between Cyrene and Carthage.[273] In 435, as related, Barka and Cyrene formed an alliance, and between 413 and 401 Euesperitae was heavily engaged with the Libyan tribes, and her enemies may be assumed to have been the inhabitants south of the city in the direction of the Syrtic Gulf.[274] In 375 Barka’s importance declines, while Carthaginian coins begin to circulate in the area, and Pseudo-Scylax, writing in the middle of the century, already knew the name of Arae Philaenorum.[275] It was related that the hostile sides (Greeks and Carthaginians) decided that the frontier between them should be set at the point where their emissaries should meet on a given day, each coming from his own city; but those who had gone farthest from their homes should be put to death. The brothers Philaeni who had left Carthage went farthest, and were accordingly buried alive at the meeting-point, known henceforth as Arae Philaenorum. The story bears the stamp of legend, perhaps originating from the placename, but this does not prove that the legend did not preserve the memory of a real war.[276] Such a conflict would explain the sea fight between Barka and Carthage, and also the influence of Syracuse discernible on coins of Cyrene, Barka, and Euesperitae at the end of the 5th and the beginning of the 4th century, since between 383-378 war was being waged between Dionysius of Syracuse and Carthage, and a rapprochement between Syracuse and Barka would have been natural. It may be, therefore, that about 375 Barka suffered a grave defeat from Carthage — her coin distribution now reveals a decline — the frontier between Cyrene and the Punic Syrtic cities being therefore fixed to the advantage of the latter. If so, evidently the peace agreement brought about an opening of the frontier to the merchants of the Syrtic towns.

The fact of continued hostilities between Cyrene and Carthage finds confirmation in two Cyrenean inscriptions. The first,[277] which belongs to the middle of the 4th century, was found in a treasury in the west part of the Sanctuary of Apollo, and records victories over the Nasamones and the Macae, both tribes of the Syrtic region. The other,[278] deriving from the Temple of Zeus, and of 4th-century date, is a list of soldiers and appears to mention a battle in a place called Isa on the Syrtic coast west of the Altars of the Philaeni.[279] These victories, gained far from home, are hardly credible before Cyrene’s recovery in the years preceding 375, nor could such successes do other than arouse the hostility of Carthage, for both the above tribes lived in the vicinity of the emporia.[280] Cyrene is unlikely to have been without allies in such a campaign; the contacts between Syracuse, Cyrene and Barka have been noted. Syracuse was on a hostile footing with Carthage both at the beginning of the 4th century (398-2, 383-78, 368), and in the second half of the same century (339). Before 368 Cyrene was not in a position to be a partner in such a war, but the Punic War of Timoleon in 339 was an appropriate opportunity, since Syracuse had then restored her democratic regime and the influence of her coinage is again noticeable upon the currency of Euesperitae.[281] One conclusion, at least, may be drawn from the fact of this conflict; it needed the active participation of the Cyrenean cities, meaning their effectual political unification at the time and a relative stabilization of their internal regimes. Further, the war required Greek control of the Libyan tribes in their vicinity, or at least some form of accord with them.

In the last years before the entry of Cyrene into the Empire of Alexander of Macedon, power in the state passed, it would seem, into the hands of an oligarchy. Most scholars today date the city constitution drawn up by Ptolemy Lagos, ruler of Egypt, in the last three decades of the 4th century. This constitution is engraved on a stele recovered from the Sanctuary of Apollo (see below p. 50),[282] and refers to the electorate then superseded, which numbered only a thousand.[283] It is to the introduction of this oligarchy that Aristotle apparently is referring when he writes[284] that the nobles (οἱ γνώριμοι) attacked the extreme Cleisthenic democracy in his time. This must have occurred before 336, when Aristotle completed his Politics. As in 339 Cyrene was, we think, allied with democratic Syracuse, the counterrevolution may have come about between the years 339 and 336, and have arisen from circumstances connected with the war against Carthage. Alexander reached Paraetonium (Gasr Madjad) the gates of Libya, in 331, on his way to the Oasis of Ammon, and a Cyrenean embassy came to welcome the conqueror.[285] In Alexander’s own words,[286] Cyrene passed peacefully under his rule, one Apollonius being appointed governor.[287]

On the King’s death (in 323) civil wars broke out in both Cyrene and Barka,[288] apparently the continuation of the same class-struggles which had brought about the fall of the democratic regime. The aristocratic refugees summoned an ex-officer of Alexander, Thimbron, from Crete to aid them; he came to Cyrenaica with a force of mercenaries. The conflict was prolonged with various vicissitudes, and finally the Cyreneans were forced to summon the Libyan tribes and even the Carthaginians to their aid; during the siege of Cyrene by Thimbron, moreover, the democrats drove out or butchered their aristocrats, whose faction appealed to Ptolemy Lagos, Alexander’s successor in Egypt. Ptolemy despatched to Cyrene his commander Ophelias, thereupon the Cyreneans made common cause with Thimbron against Ophelias, but were defeated by him, Thimbron being captured and put to death. Victory secured, Ptolemy arrived in Cyrene to consolidate his rule throughout the territory.[289] It is more than likely that his active intervention was hastened on the one hand by the attack of the Cyrenean demos on its nobility, an attack which had revealed their determination to carry the social revolution to its final conclusion, and on the other by the alliance which the demos had formed with Carthage.

Ptolemy garrisoned Cyrene,[290] but behaved, it would seem, with moderation towards the defeated inhabitants. But the city did not yield its liberty easily. In 313, when Ptolemy was engaged with Antigonus, it rose and besieged Ophelias and his force in the Acropolis. Ptolemy, returning, sent an expedition under Agis to put down the rising.[291] Even now he did not behave with great rigour, but disarming the Cyreneans, sent the leading rebels to Alexandria. Simultaneously the city’s coins begin to be replaced by issues bearing the inscription Κυρανάων Πτολεμαιῶ, reflecting, apparently, some sort of settlement between Ptolemy and the Cyrenean polis.[292] But before many months had passed, Ophelias, left by Ptolemy as governor, seized power and declared himself king.[293] Several scholars attribute to his reign (321-309) the coins inscribed Κυρανάων δάμω,[294] on the assumption that Ophelias was supported by the broader strata of the Cyrenean demos. He responded, however, to the invitation of Agathocles tyrant of Syracuse to join him in his war against Carthage, and mobilized a large number of Cyreneans as well as 10,000 Athenian volunteers lately deprived of their native citizenship, who had reached Cyrene eager for new lands. With 10,000 troops and an equal number of external elements accompanied by their women and children, Ophelias set out westward, performing in several months, under intense difficulties, the march along the Syrtic shore to Africa. His force reached Agathocles in a state of exhaustion after losing many of its members, so that it was not difficult for Agathocles to put Ophelias to death and to merge the remnant of his force in his own army.[295] After which events, Ptolemy was able to reassert his control over Cyrene through the medium of his natural son Magas.[296]

It was in the initial period of Ptolemaic rule that was drawn up the famous Cyrenean constitution most of whose clauses have been found inscribed on the stele to which allusion has already been made. The constitution has produced a very wide literature, nor have scholars reached a final decision on its date. But the opinion of the majority is that the inscription belongs to the rule of Ptolemy Lagos and not to the 3rd century, as some scholars originally thought.[297] Opinions still differ, however, on the exact time of the drafting, and whether this took place in 322,[298] 313[299], or 308.[300] Bengtson[301] has indeed remarked that there are few prospects of an authoritative decision.

The new regime described in Ptolemy’s constitution is timocratic i.e. the possession of citizen-rights is conditioned by the enjoyment of a minimal yearly income of 20 Alexandrian minae (2,000 drachmae). In harmony with these restrictions the law sets up a body (πολίτευμα) of 10,000 citizens (in place of the restricted body of a thousand which preceded it), within which framework operate moderately democratic arrangements, albeit Ptolemy takes care to retain certain powers for himself. Citizenship is open to adults of thirty years and over. The consultative bodies are two; the upper is the Gerousia, with a hundred and one members, to be elected by the entire electorate for life, although the first members are appointed by Ptolemy personally. The Council (βουλή), on the other hand, has 500 members elected by lot, half its members retiring annually or every second year. The number of its membership points to a division of the citizen-body into five or ten tribes (φυλαί). Capital cases are to be tried before the Gerousia and the Boule, whether sitting as a common court or each sitting separately; appeals are heard by a court of 1,500, elected from the entire citizen-body by lot; those condemned to death may appeal to Ptolemy during the first three years after the drafting of the constitution. The High Priest of Apollo heads the list of the city’s government, but the senior magistrates are the strategoi, that is, the five elected by the citizens, and Ptolemy himself. In case of war, the people decides whether or not new strategoi are to be elected, and it is clear from this clause[302] that the city retains the right to wage war both within the frontiers of the country and beyond them.[303] The law further sets up five nomophylakes (νομοφύλακες)[304] to serve chiefly as recorders of the laws; five ephors,[305] and five nomothetai (νομοθέται) who would have drafted the laws of the constitution.

If we ignore Ptolemy’s authority, the internal procedures of the above constitution are not undemocratic. But its degree of liberalism should not be exaggerated, since the annual income that is a condition of citizenship is far from low. In Athens at the end of the 5th century B.C. many workers and craftsmen supported themselves on an annual income of 180 drachmas,[306] and if prices rose in Greece in the 4th century, the same rise had not affected Cyrene,[307] hence 2,000 dr. is a fairly high income, certainly not enjoyed by the common people, craftsmen and small peasants, and restricted, we must suppose, to the well-to-do. The law’s attitude, indeed, does not particularly favour the wage-earner or the manual worker;[308] one of its clauses deprives physicians, teachers, heralds, instructors in archery, riding and the use of weapons, of the right to be elected to magistracies, and another,[309] much mutilated, reproduces a list of categories whose participation in government is restricted or prohibited; they include the manual labourer, the owner of a potter’s kiln, the vendor of wine, the porter (or trader? — the word is φορτήγος) and anyone joining Ptolemy’s new colonies (ἢ ἄλλοτε οἰκίας τὰς Πτολεμαϊκὰς ἐσέλθηι. But see p. 133).

The law generally reflects a situation of distress resulting from the struggle that had preceded its enactment. The new colony in the region of Thinis (Θῖνις) mentioned in the inscription,[310] shows that in this period the citizens of Cyrene had found need to seek lands at a distance, and the participation of Libyan tribes in the struggle against Thimbron may have encouraged unrest which had arisen amongst them due to the expansion of Greek settlement. The constitution, at any rate, elicits a desire to conciliate the Libyan population by granting citizen-rights to the sons of mixed marriages endowed with the necessary income, and a desire on the part of the Ptolemies to pose as Libyan sovereigns.[311]

2. Ptolemaic Rule

With the final consolidation of Ptolemaic control, Cyrene’s real independence came to an end, despite a maintenance of the external forms, and despite the city’s attempts to throw off royal control as late as the time of Ptolemy III and Ptolemy Euergetes II. The new regime was crystallized, as we have seen, in favour of the upper income groups. The Ptolemaic constitution bears traces of a situation of disorder and impoverishment,[312] of indebtedness, of the abandonment and destruction of estates,[313] of the flight and restoration of exiles. Some of the citizens are experiencing difficulties in obtaining the minimal capital required to maintain their civic rights.[314] Ptolemy’s garrison is stationed in the city,[315] and the danger exists of reprisals against returned political exiles.[316] The demagogic adventure of Ophelias suggests the need of diverting the resentment of the masses by an impressive project of expansion westward, while the participation of a number of Athenian emigres in the expedition and the readiness of as many as 10,000 inhabitants of Cyrene and elsewhere to join it, indicate their depressed economic situation at the time.

The extensive emigration proceeding from Cyrenaica at the beginning of the hellenistic epoch,[317] also indicates that there were impoverished elements among the Cyrenean population from whom the emigration proceeded. Most of the Cyreneans recorded in Egypt in this period are humble people of few means — simple soldiers, owning small kleroi,[318] who had left no property in their mother-country. Their organized community (πολίτευμα) in Egypt was less esteemed from several points of view, than the other foreign communities, and most of its members were cleruch and ἐκ τῆς ἐπιγονῆς, i.e. of the second generation of military settlers. But there was also a small group of officers and government officials of Cyrenean birth.[319] The Cyreneans were, after the Macedonians, the largest contemporary group of Greek immigrants into Egypt, and certainly the largest community derived from one state. This was doubtless largely caused by Cyrene’s geographical proximity to Egypt, but it should not be disassociated from the condition of Cyrene herself. Alexander’s conquests had opened new sources of livelihood, new posts, occupations and fields of investment to the impoverished Greek populations, thus furnishing a temporary alleviation of their distress. This applied equally to the Greeks of Cyrenaica.

In 308 or 301 Magas, the natural son of Ptolemy the First, seized control of Cyrene,[320] In a year that appears to have fallen between 278 and 274, when his stepbrother Ptolemy II Philadelphus succeeded to the Egyptian throne, Magas seceded from his father’s kingdom and became an independent monarch. Apparently out of fear of Arsinoe, Ptolemy II’s queen, he signed a treaty with Antiochus I of Syria and married his daughter Apamé. A little later he quitted Cyrene to fight a war against Ptolemy,[321] having strengthened the walls and acropolis of the city,[322] but was forced to return by the outbreak of a Libyan rising in his rear.[323] Not long afterwards, having become reconciled to Philadelphus, Magas betrothed his daughter Berenice to Philadelphus’ son, the future Ptolemy III Euergetes.[324] Magas ruled for the rest of his reign without wars,[325] dying somewhere about 250.[326] His widow, being of the Seleucid dynasty, put aside Berenice’s betrothal with Ptolemy III, and brought to Cyrene Demetrius “the Fair”,[327] son of Demetrius Poliorketes, to marry her. Demetrius, however, was killed by Berenice herself;[328] she was thus able to realize her marriage to Ptolemy III, and to bring about the reunion of the kingdoms of Egypt and Cyrene (circa 246). In the Adulis inscription Libya appears among the countries subject to Ptolemy Euergetes.[329] Cyrenaica remained united with Egypt until 163/2 B.C.

Although Magas does not seem to have struck coins in his own name, but always in that of Ptolemy I or of Berenice I,[330] there is no doubt that in Cyrene itself he bore the title of king, and this is evidenced by two inscriptions, one from Cyrene[331] and one from her port of Apollonia;[332] he is also called “king” in the treaty which he signed with the Oreioi (Ὄρειοι) of Crete.[333] His fame and power as ruler are testified to by the inscription of the Indian King Asoka, which mentions his name together with those of other hellenistic kings of his time (251 or 248).[334]

With the establishment of Ptolemaic rule Cyrenaica made her real entry into the Hellenistic world, which had been subject to such decisive political and economic changes since the conquests of Alexander. Various factors prevented the Ptolemies from behaving towards Cyrene as they had behaved towards Egypt. Cyrene was the home of a preponderantly Greek population; the natives were divided between complete assimilants to Greek culture, and half-nomadic cultivators living at a primitive standard. Here the conquerors did not face an ancient alien culture both deep-rooted and religious in its manifestations: there was no wealthy and powerful clergy consolidated by generations, which required both appeasement and supervision. Towards the Greek cities, potential sources for the building of a civil service, a more moderate and cautious approach nevertheless was required on the part of the royal government; the sturdy democratic spirit of their broad masses obliged a special attitude, and sometimes also suppression. In consequence Ptolemaic rule in Cyrene did not on the one hand involve racial antagonism between rulers and ruled as in Egypt, nor was there need to engage systematically in the hellenization of the subject population. On the other hand from the beginning the Greek character of the country restricted the building of a consistently etatistic regime like that of Ptolemaic Egypt, nor did there exist in Cyrene that dependence on the control of Nile irrigation which had formed the basis of centralized government in Egypt for thousands of years.

Accordingly it is highly improbable that Ptolemy I saw the Cyrenaic region as “spear-won earth” (δορόκτητος χώρα), or that broad tracts fell into his hands as his personal possession immediately, for the concept of royal land no longer existed in the country. Ptolemy had gained control of Cyrene initially by a compromise and by making regulations such as could ensure his power, and it may be surmised that he reached similar accommodations with the other towns of the territory, respecting their internal autonomy. The political character of the country was such, that the series of revolts that preceded the final consolidation of Ptolemaic power there would not fundamentally have modified the necessity of such arrangements. Yet the hand of the rulers was perceptible in the economic sphere: between 308 and 3°4 the Cyrenean coinage undergoes modification, and silver, previously rare, becomes abundant.[335] The city’s coins persist in all three metals between 304 and 290, under Magas’ rule, while the royal issues figure side by side with them in gold and bronze. But towards 290 approximately Cyrene’s gold issues disappear, and her bronze coins follow in 277.[336] As to the internal institutions of city-government, if they are preserved, Ptolemy’s strategos is resident in the city,[337] doubtless subsequently replaced by Magas himself, and under Ptolemy III and his successors, by the king’s deputy. At the end of the 2nd century B.C., under Euergetes II or Ptolemy X Soter, an inscription evidences that royal orders concerning Cyrene’s affairs were transmitted simultaneously both to the city authorities and to the royal officials appointed over the towns (οἱ ἐπὶ τῶν πόλεων τεταγμένοι).[338] The courtesies were observed but the king’s word was final.

The degree of internal liberty of the cities no doubt depended on the nature of the ruler. It may be observed that the constitution of Ptolemy Lagos, although directed only to Cyrene, nevertheless includes an instruction that affects the other cities of the country, to wit, the clause relating to the granting of citizenship to men of various origins who had settled in new settlements of the countryside.[339] In this connection must be considered the problem of the invitation of the philosophers Ecdelus and Demophanes, who were summoned from their city of Mantineia, apparently between the years 250 and 220,[340] in order to reform the constitution of Cyrene. The character of their measures is unknown, nor are the circumstances of the invitation recorded. We only know that the reformers were devoted to Greek liberty. It is possible that a connection should be seen between their reforms and the Cyrenean coins of Magas inscribed with the word κοινόν (federation),[341] but many scholars have rejected the connection.[342] It has also been conjectured, on the evidence of the letters Δημ — inscribed on some contemporary issues, that the settlement was arrived at under the patronage of Demetrius the Fair when he was Berenice’s husband, but as no detailed information of the episode has been preserved, no decision can be made, nor can we know how to interpret the reform or the Koinon. As to the relationships between the Ptolemies and the cities of Cyrene, although the legend κοινόν overstruck on Magas’ coinage seems to hint at some revolutionary event, even had the cities risen against his successors, expelled them[343] and formed a league among themselves, — no record of the episode has survived in contemporary history.

The question whether the Ptolemies appointed a permanent deputy over the entire country has not been sufficiently clarified. We hear only of one governor (Ptolemy Sympetesis) under Euergetes II, who also acted as viceroy during his visit to Rome.[344] The case of Philo son of Castor, commander of the king’s bodyguard and strategos under Ptolemy V,[345] is less certain, and Bengtson regards him as the governor solely of the Libyan regions, but not of the country as a whole.

There is no doubt that an administrative distinction, if not a complete separation, was made between the settled country districts and the Libyan tribal areas.[346] Ptolemy Euergetes II in his testament distinguishes between the cities and the remainder of the country;[347] this distinction satisfactorily explains the duties of Philammon the Libyarch “over the places about Cyrene” at the end of the 3rd century B.C.[348]. These tribal areas were, it seems, under the surveillance of an appropriate commissioner, and as time went on came to be regarded juridically as χώρα βασιλική, i.e. royal domain.

Despite Ophelias’ failure and the demagogic motive of his expedition, Cyrene’s interest in the Syrtic region, more especially under Ptolemaic rule, was serious. If some settlement had been found acceptable both to Cyrene and to Carthage in the 4th century, in the the 3rd the frontier stood 280 kilometres further west of the Altars of the Philaeni, in the vicinity of Euphrantas Pyrgos (Εύφράντας πύργος),[349] today Gasr Zaphran in Tripolitania. It is unknown when this Cyrenean advance took place, but it may be noted that there are traces of Jewish settlement of the 3rd century B.C. on the coast of the Syrtic Gulf,[350] and this may be a remnant of the temporary advance of the Ptolemies, whose dynasty is credited with the first settlement of Jews in Libya. Whatever the case, Ptolemaic coins are common about Carthage from this time on,[351] and the Punic capital began to strike coins on the Greek model when the Ptolemies passed from the Attic to the Phoenician standard, in order to assist their trade with both Phoenicia and Carthage. Testimony to such contacts is provided by finds of hellenistic pottery at Lepcis,[352] and Cyrenean coins bearing the palm tree are again common among Ptolemaic currency at this time.[353] These data therefore permit us to assume that even if the Ptolemaic advance westward was made in the course of a war, the collision ended with an agreement beneficial to both sides, and apparently with the withdrawal of the Ptolemies to their former frontier.[354]

The trade with the Syrtis and Egypt will help to explain the systematic development of the Cyrenean ports by the Ptolemies: Magas strikes coins bearing the representation of a trireme,[355] the seahorse[356] and the trident.[357] He may well have developed Apollonia, where a mint began to operate in the 3rd century;[358] the harbour was already well protected (πανόρμος), according to Pseudo-Scylax,[359] by the middle of the 4th century, but the city-walls are now known to belong to its last years,[360] and may have been the work of Magas. The splendid tower-flanked west gate with its distinctive inner vantage-court would suit an early hellenistic date.[361] To the south-east of the enceinte, north of the present east-west main road, building remains containing 4th century and hellenistic sherds were disclosed during World War II and recorded by the writer in 1944, suggesting that the town had extended outside the hellenistic walls in that period. In the first part of the 3rd century Apollonia was separated from Cyrene and promoted to the status of an independent city, in the opinion of several scholars,[362] who base their view on the fact that the city’s name does not belong to the same class as the names Ptolemais, Berenice, etc., which are associated, it is said, with the work of Ptolemy III; it would therefore be more ancient. Jones attributed the conversion of the harbour to a city to the reforms of Ecdalus and Demophanes, but his conjecture seems to be without the support of evidence, since the name Apollonia does not appear before the 1st century B.C.,[363] whereas the city of Berenice existed on its new site at least by the middle of the 3rd.

The east gate of Ptolemais belongs typologically to the earlier hellenistic age, but the city was evidently refortified under Euergetes II, for the west gate was built in 158 B.C.[364] Ptolemais became a large city, even if one excludes from its area its southernmost quarter on the mountain escarpment, which remained uninhabited although within the wall, and contained only the Akropolis.[365] The city’s area approximates to that of Cyrene, and its hippo-damian plan probably belongs to this period; it existed at least from the 2nd century B.C. One gets the impression that Ptolemais was designed to be the country’s effective new capital, and even to rival Alexandria. Its source of agricultural supply was the Plain of Barka to the south, but the city itself was separated from the Plain by a mountainous range running parallel with the shore and commanded no more than a narrow coastal tract. Hence the inhabitants must have engaged primarily in trade and crafts; Ptole-mais’ buildings were rich and important. Here too, Ptolemy III opened a mint.[366]

Magas’ great interest in the control of the sea arose no doubt from his predicament as seceder from Egypt. It was also necessary in order to protect Cyrenean commerce against piracy, a grave factor in this period. Crete was a special centre of piratical activity, and lay across Cyrene’s approaches to the Aegean. Hence the treaty signed by Magas with the Oreioi of Crete[367] in the second half of his reign would have been one of his efforts to restrain piracy, at a time when peace prevailed between himself and Ptolemy Philadelphus. This period further corresponded with that of Philadelphus’ Island League (270-250), with which he was able to control the Aegean and to check piratical raids.

Euesperitae also was an object of the dynasty’s development activity, but here the operation was more radical: the entire city, which was situated among the lagoons along the northern shore, was moved westward to the edge of the present harbour,[368] and its name changed to Berenice, in honour of Magas’ mother or of his daughter, wife of Ptolemy III Euergetes. The pottery evidence suggests this may have taken place as early as the end of the third quarter of the 4th century, when pottery on the old site appears to end,[369] but Vickers believed that the analysis of coin finds there points to a transfer as late as the middle of the following century.[370] The name of the old site represented by the initial “E”, still appears on coins at the beginning of the 3rd century,[371] while an inscription from Alexandria belonging to the first half of the same century, bears the text Ξενάρατος Χαρμαντίου Βερνικεὺς ἀφ’ Ἑσπερίδων;[372] hence the transfer may well have begun somewhat before Ptolemy III’s reign.[373]

Ptolemaic influence is less evident, for the time being, at Teuchei-ra. Its name was, indeed, changed to Arsinoe, but this new title is not mentioned in sources before the ist century B.C.[374] There is nevertheless hellenistic masonry in certain sectors of the city wall, and rich epigraphical material evidences the settlement of new settlers (probably katoikoi) in the city in the hellenistic period.

Changes in Cyrenaican land-tenure in this period will be discussed in greater detail elsewhere (Chap. III). Here three phenomena may be briefly noted, namely: firstly, the steady expansion of the crown domains; secondly, the colonization of extraneous elements (military settlers and the like) on the soil, on the initiative of the Ptolemaic sovereigns; thirdly, the extension of the sovereign’s decisive influence over the Cyrenean temple estates and their revenues.

It is further possible in some measure to trace the evolution of the status of the native Libyans in this epoch. Under Ptolemy Lagos Libyan women were marrying Cyreneans of the well-to-do class,[375] and the allusions of the poet Callimachus to Libyan women, as well as the Libyan affectations of the royal house, have been referred to. But the active part of the Libyans in the Thimbronic war on the democratic side and their rising against Magas show that not all the Libyans were reconciled with the new rulers. They also participated in the Cyrenean revolt against Euergetes II,[376] and as late as the ist century B.C. retained much of their independence, as is proved by the aid extended by their king Anabus to Arataphila, widow of the High Priest of Cyrene, during civil strife[377]. Yet in the same century the peasants (οἱ γεωργοί) of Cyrene belonged to the three groups of the state’s non-citizens,[378] and there is little doubt that these were chiefly Libyans. We have no information concerning the process whereby this change of status took place; we do however know that in 218 B.C. Philopator, mobilizing for the Syrian war, included 3000 Libyans in the infantry commanded by Ammonius of Barka, and several thousand Libyan cavalry.[379] In 162 the Libyans are fighting on the Cyrenean side[380] in their revolt against Euergetes II, and it may be relevant to recall that the battle of Raphia (217) was the departure point among the Egyptian native soldiery, who had played a decisive part in the action, for a ferment which reached the stage of rebellion and led to various concessions in their favour on the part of the Ptolemies, the most important being the admission of the natives to the ranks of the cleruchs. This movement may well have influenced the Libyan natives, nor is it without significance that the Libyan rising against Euergetes II in 162 was led by an Egyptian, Ptolemy Sympetesis.[381] The rise of a progressive Libyan kingdom to their west, under the leadership of the capable Massinissa, in the first half of the 2nd century,[382] might also have exercized a strong influence on the Libyans of Cyrenaica and helped to intensify the ferment. At the end of the reign of Euergetes II, who died in 116, or in the early days of Iris successor, Ptolemy IX Soter II, a Cyrenean inscription[383] reveals a situation of agrarian disturbance in the country, which we shall endeavour to explain when we come to investigate the Cyrenean economy (See Ch. III).

In 163/2 B.C. Ptolemy Euergetes II (also known as Neoteros or Physcon) quarrelled with his brother Philometor over the throne of Egypt, and the Roman Senate,[384] called to arbitrate, adjudged to him the kingdom of Cyrene. He thereupon went to war with his brother for the possession of Cyprus, and the hostilities furnished the Cyreneans with an opportunity for revolt, which seems, however, to have ended in a compromise between themselves and the king.[385] Losing his campaign in Cyprus, Euergetes conceded the island in return for the control of certain unidentified towns, for a yearly supply of grain from Egypt, and for the hand of Philometor’s daughter (159).[386] In 155, however, the King was the object of an attempted assassination, and interpreting the act as directed against both his life and his kingdom — determined to bequeath his realm to Rome in the event of his dying without heirs. The stele on which this testament was inscribed, and which was set up at Cyrene, has been found and still exists.[387] On the death of Philometor in 146/5, however, Euergetes returned to rule the reunited kingdom of Egypt and Cyrene,[388] and on his own decease in 116 bequeathed Cyrene to his illegitimate son, Ptolemy Apion.[389] Under Euergetes II Cyrene had entered finally into the Roman sphere of influence, from which she never re-emerged. In his readiness to bequeath his kingdom to Rome, indeed, Euergetes was merely acknowledging the true situation, for he had acquired his power entirely with the assistance of the Roman Senate.

3. Roman Rule

We have no details of the reign of Ptolemy Apion, but he evidently followed in his father’s footsteps, for on his death in 96 B.C. his kingdom passed, by the terms of his testament, to the Roman people.[390] The Senate resolved to restore to the cities of Cyrene their liberty,[391] and took over only the personal property of Apion, including his lands, which now became ager publicus populi Romani.[392] The remainder of the country returned to the political position that it had enjoyed before Ptolemaic rule, in that it was again divided between the independent cities and their territories, five in number, Cyrene, Ptolemais, Euesperitae, Teucheira and Apollonia;[393] it may be supposed that Ptolemais had by now effectively assumed the place of Barka. In relation to Rome, these cities now held the status of civitates foederatae,[394]

The end of monarchic rule was quickly followed by political disturbances; somewhere between 91 and 82 B.C.[395] power was seized at Cyrene by one Nicocrates, who had slain the High Priest of Apollo, Melanippus, and usurped his function.[396] The position, however, was reversed by Melanippus’ widow, Arataphila, who set up a regime supported by the aristocrats with the aid of the Libyan king Anabus. These events are chronologically parallel with a prolonged war in the Egyptian Thebais, where the natives had arisen against the Ptolemaic regime; Rostovtzeff[397] defined this war as a rebellion of the lower orders against the government, in which nationalism and religious fanaticism were mingled; we shall attempt to ascertain the roots of the Cyrenean movement below (Ch. III). At Cyrene the seizure of the High Priesthood by Nicocrates is vital for an assessment of the situation in so far as it shows the importance of the post after the end of Ptolemaic rule. This is confirmed some decades later by the leading part played by Pausanias, High Priest of Apollo, in the Marmaritan War waged approximately between 20-2 B.C.[398] It is stated that Arataphila was supported by the aristocracy,[399] hence her régime represented chiefly the wealthy landowners allied with the Libyans; Cyrene appears to have crystallized after Apion’s death as a state ruled by this group and led by the eponymous High Priest of Apollo; such a development is also suggested by the apparent cessation of the Demiurgi steles after the 2nd century B.C. and by the prominence of the undemocratic post of Nomophylax in the ist century B.C.[400] Strabo describes the juridical structure of the city’s population in the same epoch,[401] and his account points to a complete separation between the citizens and the peasantry, a situation that perhaps reflects Arataphila’s new order. When Lucullus procured a settlement of Cyrenean affairs about this time, indeed, it is hard to suppose that he restored the democracy.

The precise significance of his reform is difficult to evaluate because we do not know if his visit preceded or followed the episode of Nicocrates and Arataphila. Lucullus’ citation from Plato, who, after alluding to Cyrene’s previous flourishing state, had added that no one was easier to govern than he who had been brought low by fortune, indicates that the city had been in a bad way, and was therefore ready to consent to unpalatable measures;[402] but it can hardly be supposed that these were fundamentally to the detriment of an aristocratic régime, since Rome’s permanent policy was to intervene in favour of such regimes. Generally, it looks as though Lucullus’ visit took place after Arataphila’s restoration of aristocratic government rather than before it.

Fifty years later (between 31 and 13 B.C.) it is true, M. Agrippa, minister of Augustus, addressed the city as “the people, the archons and the council of Cyrene”,[403] which would mean, theoretically, that a more democratic form of rule had meantime been reintroduced — yet this need be no more than a conventional diplomatic formula.[404]

In 88/6 B.C., when Lucullus reached Cyrene to mobilize ships,[405] he also found need, according to Strabo as cited by Josephus,[406] to put down a Jewish disturbance (στάσις). The reasons for this disturbance will be discussed elsewhere (see Ch. V), for this is the first appearance of the Jews in the country’s history as an independent political factor, and in the second half of the century (31-13 B.C.) they were again at odds with the city over their right to transmit the half-sheqel to the Temple of Jerusalem.[407]

The political disturbances and conflicts in Cyrene, however, do not seem to have ceased with Lucullus’ visit, and in 74 B.C. the Roman Senate saw need to intervene directly, assigning the task to a magistrate with the junior rank of quaestor.[408] If this was a decision to annex the country as a province, it may have been influenced by the pressure of a group of Roman citizens, including publicani, possessed of economic and financial interests, already settled in the country, and whose existence is evidenced by an inscription of 67 B.C. dedicated to Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus,[409] Pompey’s legate. Mentioned also in another source,[410] they had perhaps arrived earlier to take over the exploitation of the agri publici. Oost, on the other hand sees the Senate’s shortage of money as the main inducement for the annexation, and Badian finds no evidence of publicani before 67,[411] when Crete was added to the Roman dominions; by 63 Cyrene was certainly a province, and the administration of the island was merged with that of Cyrenaica.[412]

Several scholars[413] have assumed, that on the establishment of the province Cyrene lost her freedom. This however is doubtful, since the city’s officers and troops took part in the war against the Marmaritae at the end of the century under the leadership of their High Priest,[414] hence Cyrene may have retained her position as a free ally. Nevertheless, several inscriptions, particularly one group belonging to the year 67 B.C.,[415] indicate the continuation of an unstable internal situation. That year Pompey’s legate Lentulus Marcellinus arrived in the country during his commander’s great drive against the eastern Mediterranean pirates. The law which had given Pompey command of the campaign (the Lex Gabinia de piratis) had granted to him and his lieutenants control over a zone of 400 stades (80 kilometres) inland from all the coasts concerned, and Marcellinus apparently found it necessary to use this authority in Cyrenaica. According to the above inscriptions, a group of Roman citizens expressed its thanks to Cornelius Marcellinus for suppressing pirates,[416] and the legate settled on land near Ptolemais a mixed body of settlers, including some Cyreneans, but also people from Cilicia and IIIyria;[417] this is likely enough to have been the settlement of a group of captured pirates on the model of similar colonization work carried out by Pompey in Asia, Greece and Italy.[418] Marcellinus further arbitrated in a dispute between Apollonia and Cyrene,[419] and collected contributions towards some project of watersupply or irrigation.[420] All this suggests that the country’s government had been so enfeebled that Marcellinus had been forced to intervene in its internal affairs to the point of suppressing banditry; the Cyreneans at any rate felt bound to honour him with the title of “saviour” (σωτήρ),[421] an appellation hitherto reserved by them for the Ptolemies and in a later period for Hadrian and Antoninus Pius.

This period seems, nevertheless, to have been one of prosperity for Ptolemais. The remains of the “palace”, a wealthy residence excavated in the centre of the city (il Palazzo dei Colonne)[422], if they belong initially to this period, reveal wealth and good taste influenced both by the eastern and western Mediterranean. The Roman governor Crassus (23-19 B.C.) opened a mint in Ptolemais,[423] which already exceeded Cyrene in importance, and hardly fell behind the more ancient city in its objets d’art; its system of water supply was more up to date, its dwellings were larger and more magnificent. Ptolemais also boasted an academy and several gymnasia. Its commercial and economic contacts are evidenced by finds of Italian Arretine red glaze pottery, and of abundant Gallic terra sigillata. Stlaccius, whose name appears in the city’s neighbourhood,[424] perhaps belonged to the Puteolan family of that name, freed slaves engaged in the eastern trade; two brothers of this name are mentioned contemporaneously in the edicts which Augustus directed to Cyrene.[425] West of the city of Ptolemais, a majestic mausoleum was built in the second half of the ist century B.C., and later passed, on epigraphical evidence, into the hands of the Stlaccii themselves.[426] The palace of columns possessed roomy cellars, and attached shops on the north and east. In the ist century B.C. and A.D. there were changes and improvements in the building. Although an analysis of the personal Latin names recorded at Teucheira, Ptolemais and Cyrene in the early imperial period is not yet available, the impression is that the province absorbed a considerable group of Italian immigrants after the death of Apion and in the reign of Augustus.

Nor was building activity lacking at Cyrene in the ist century B.C. A stele dating before the middle of the century carries a long list of contributors and the sums contributed presumably for the erection of a large public building in which it was set up at the east end of the present village of Shahat, where the west and east hills of the ancient city meet. Several sums recorded amount to a thousand drachmas, at least two to two-thousand drachmas, and one to three thousand. The wealth of some citizens is further demonstrated by the inscriptions of Claudia Venusta, who erected no less than four temples, to Athena, Persephone, Dionysus and Demeter respectively, at her own expense.[427]

The civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey did not pass Cyrene by. Pompey held the province, but after the battle of Pharsalia (48 B.C.) the city refused to receive his lieutenant Labienus,[428] and was subsequently captured by Cato. From Berenice Cato set out on his famous march along the Syrtic shore.[429] It has been shown by numismatic study that the port of Cyrene served as a Roman naval base from Pompey’s time and throughout the civil wars.[430] In 43 Cassius held the country,[431] but Antony gave it to the children of Cleopatra[432] It passed officially under the administration of the Senate in 27 B.C.[433]

As Roman authority was still largely restricted, it would seem, to the city territories, the Libyan tribes had begun, probably as early as 96 B.C., to spread northward; the hand of Rome under the Republic and during the Civil Wars that preceded its fall had been unable to check them. But in the year 20 B.C. Cornelius Balbus mounted a campaign from Africa against the Garamantes who occupied Fezzan south of the Syrtis,[434] and perhaps simultaneously Sulpicius Quirinius opened a wide attack on the Marmaritae (or Marmaridae[435]) to east of the Cyrenes;[436] the war, in which Cyrene took an active part, apparently reached a pause in 2 B.C.,[437] but Desanges[438] believes that the murder of L. Cornelius Lentulus, possibly proconsul of Africa at this time, by the Nasamones, should be linked with the campaign conducted by Cossus Cornelius Lentulus, who contemporarily pacified the Gaetuli of the Syrtic coast. If this is right, then Gsell’s theory that the Syrtic coast was in 25 B.C. temporarily reattached for purposes of the campaign to Cyrene (a position reflected in Agrippa’s survey of the Empire, according to which Cyrenaica extended to the Isle of Jerba)[439] must be abandoned, and the war would have taken place towards 2 B.C., after the survey had been completed. In A.D. 14, at all events, Lepcis Magna was again under control of the African province.[440] To 1 B.C., and to Cyrenaica, in the view of Desanges, belongs a passage of Dio[441] recording the repulse of an enemy advancing from Egypt — presumably Libyans — by a praetorian commander despatched by L. Domitius Ahenobarbus.

Valuable light on the state of the province under Augustus is thrown by that ruler’s edicts, found inscribed on slabs in the Agora of the city, and promulgated in the years 7-4 B.C.[442] The Emperor’s rescripts concern three principal subjects, namely, the province’s judicial system, the taxability of citizens, and the recovery of money extracted contrary to law by the governing instances. Subsequent to the inauguration of direct Roman rule, service on the juries in the country had become concentrated in the hands of a small group of Roman citizens, and at the time when the edict was promulgated there were among them only 215 enjoying incomes of 2,500 denarii or more, the minimal sum qualifying for the judicial function. This group had abused its authority by condemning innocent Cyreneans to death, and to remedy this state of affairs, Augustus ordered the governor to appoint an equal number of Roman and Cyrenean judges to hear capital charges, fixing the minimal census qualifying for service at 7,500 denarii. He further permitted Greek defendants to decide if they desired a court composed solely of Roman judges, or a court composed of Greeks and Romans on a parity basis. He further prohibited the bringing of murder-charges against Greeks by Romans, except when the plaintiff was a Greek with Roman citizenship.

In cases between the Greeks themselves, with the exception of those involving capital charges, Greek judges were to be nominated, but not from among the fellow-citizens of the offendant or of the plaintiff. Capital charges were to be heard before the governor or before a court nominated by him.

The second edict (the third clause of the inscription, but the second theme among those detailed above) obliged citizens of Cyrene who had obtained Roman citizenship to fulfil their obligations in respect of the expenses of special duties laid upon them by the city (liturgies, munera) in its interest, unless they had been explicitly exempted on receipt of citizenship. The third edict concerned the important subject of de pecuniis repetundis that is, the claims of provincials for the recovery of money levied from them contrary to law by the Roman administrators. In his rescript on this question, Augustus cites the senatorial decree of the same year (4 B.C.), designed to facilitate citizens to secure an investigation of their claims. Previously they had been compelled to spend prolonged periods at Rome before obtaining redress; now the senatorial decree enabled the claimant to nominate a legal representative (patronus) to present his case to the Senate, and a regulation provided for the appointment within a defined period of a tribunal of Senators to assess the claim.

The edicts of Augustus have for many years constituted a central object of interest among historians of the legal and administrative history of the imperial provinces, nor is it our object to enter into the various problems involved. Analysts of the document have emphasized Augustus’ role in provincial reform, and his personal intervention in the affairs of a province which was theoretically subject to senatorial supervision; they have seen herein an expression of the overriding authority (imperium mains) of the Princeps. No small importance attaches to the document, in so far as from it we learn for the first time of a senatorial decree intended to facilitate claims made de repetundis.

Roman care for the public good in these years was not confined to the judicial and financial spheres. Progress in the economic field is also discernible in the country’s life. Improvements in the water-supply are to be seen at Cyrene and Ptolemais,[443] and a fragmentary inscription from Apollonia may refer to the erection of an aqueduct.[444] The magnificent Caesareum of Cyrene, in origin a hellenistic structure, was modified in the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius,[445] when it appears to have been re-adapted and dedicated to Julius Caesar.[446] An Aqua Augusta was repaired in Tiberius’ reign.[447] In the early days of the Principate the north portico of the Agora was rededicated to Zeus Soter, Rome and Augustus,[448] and a late hellenistic ornamental well-house in the north-west corner of the Agora transformed into a sanctuary of the Divine Augustus, identified with Apollo.[449] The east front of the Acropolis was refortified by a wall of fine drafted masonry.[450] The large walled enclosure on the south-eastern angle of the city walls, which contained a number of circular cisterns, does not seem, according to the style of its construction, to be later than the first half of the first century of the current era.[451]

The Augustan edicts provide evidence that some Cyrenean citizens received Roman citizenship from Julius Caesar and Augustus.[452] A larger number subsequently obtained civitas from Claudius or Nero, and confirmation of Tiberius’ favour is perhaps to be seen in the placing of his statue in the so-called “Strategeion” in the Sanctuary by Sufenas Proculus.[453] In Tiberius’ reign, it should be noted, the city’s coinage experienced a brief rehabilitation, before it was replaced completely by Roman issues.[454] In 8 B.C. the well-to-do Jewish community of Berenice repaired and readorned its amphitheatre, designed to house its periodical gatherings.[455]

Little is known of the Cyrenean countryside in the first days of Roman rule. A bath-installation at Messa west of Cyrene belongs to this period, and the regular distribution of farmsteads east of the same area shggests that the lands here were contemporarily divided into fairly large farm-units. The inhabitants of the village of al-Gubba, east of Cyrene, found some reason to express their loyalty to the Emperor Claudius in an inscription set up in a public place.[456] A Roman military highway linked Cyrene with Phykus, the ancient harbour northwest of the city (today Ras al-Hammam), and can be plainly seen in air-photographs. Pliny the Elder wrote of the measuring of the distance from Phykus to Cape Criumetopon in Crete in the time of M. Vipsanius Agrippa,[457] and this operation may have had as its object the establishment of a mail-packet service between the two parts of the province. If so, the aforesaid highway was probably an Augustan work; several of Cyrenaica’s important roads, however, were paved or repaired, according to their milestones, by Claudius, among them being the routes from Cyrene to Apollonia and from Balagrae to Cyrene.[458]

The estates of Cyrene’s temples continued to exist and flourish, in the Roman period, on epigraphical evidence, since the revenues of Apollo (πρόσοδοι) are referred to under Augustus,[459] Nero,[460] Trajan,[461] and Hadrian,[462] also between the years 161-180.[463] The management of these domains was in all probability under the influence of the Roman government, for under Augustus (before 20 B.C.) the proconsul G. Lucanius Proculus made a dedication to Caesar with money given to him by the priests of Apollo.[464] The future emperor Vespasian, when serving as quaestor of Cyrene,[465] also discharged the priesthood of that deity,[466] and the same post was held in hi by a relative of Antonius Flamma, who had governed the province till the year 69.[467] The latter, indeed, was sued by the Cyreneans for corruption and brutality, and punished by exile.[468] This incident was by no means isolated, for the governors Caesius Cordus[469] and Pedius Blaesus[470] were called to account in a similar fashion for their misdeeds in Cyrene. The successful prosecution of these Cyrenean governors for robbery and fraud by the inhabitants they had governed, shows that Augustus’ machinery for the protection of the property of the subject was needed, and was not completely ineffective. Such action on the part of the people of Cyrene also permits the conjecture that they possessed a concilium or conventus provinciae participated in by the provincial notables; a similar institution existed in Crete,[471] and such assemblies in some measure secured representation of the provincials and protected their interests; the existence of such at Cyrene is the more likely in view of the title of “High Priest” (ἀρχιερεύς),[472] borne by the priest of Apollo at Cyrene and applied elsewhere to the priest of the imperial cult which formed the raison d’etre for these provincial conventions.