Chapter I

BEFORE beginning the narrative of our expedition to the Cyrenaica, we shall recall, for the convenience of the reader, a few of the leading facts connected with the history of that country.

Accounts, more or less detailed, of the origin and progress of the Greek colony, of which Cyrene was the capital, are given by Herodotus, Strabo, Sallust, &c. In modern times these fragmentary and often contradictory accounts have been carefully collated and examined by the learned Dane, Thrige, in his work entitled “Historia Cyrenes, Havniæ, 1819.” The subsequent great work of Mr. Grote, and the several articles relating to Cyrene in Dr. William Smith’s Classical Dictionaries, contain everything of importance that the learned criticism of those distinguished scholars has been able to authenticate regarding the history of the Pentapolis. We have, therefore, with Dr. Smith’s kind permission, compiled the following compendium from the articles _Cyrene_, _Cyrenaica_, _Thera_, _Battus_, &c., in the Dictionaries of Classical Geography and Biography.

The Cyrenaica or Pentapolis was the name of an extensive tract of country in the North of Africa, bounded on the east and west by the respective territories of Egypt and Carthage, and on the north and south by the Mediterranean and the Desert. The name _Cyrenaica_ was derived from the capital city, Cyrene, and properly denoted the country as a whole; while _Pentapolis_ was a collective name given to the five great cities of Cyrene, Barca, Teuchira, Hesperides, and Apollonia, with their several territories and dependencies. The Romans, therefore, who looked upon the country as a single province of the empire, called it Cyrenaica; whereas, in the time of the Ptolemies, when the country was practically a confederacy of separate colonies, it was generally known by the federal name of Pentapolis.

Cyrene, the capital of this country, and the most important Hellenic colony in Africa, was founded in B.C. 631, by a body of Dorian colonists from Thera (Santorin), an island in the Ægean Sea belonging to Sparta. Battus, the leader of this band of colonists, was the son of Polymnestus, a Theræan noble, his mother, according to some accounts, being a Cretan princess. Considerable doubt exists regarding the origin of his name: Herodotus believes that it was the Libyan word for “king,” while others suppose it to have been derived from βατταρίζω, and to have been expressive of an alleged impediment in his speech. No less doubt is there as to the cause which led to the colonization of Cyrene. According to the account of the Cyrenæans, as given by Herodotus, Battus, having gone to consult the Delphic oracle about the removal of the physical defect above mentioned, was enjoined to lead a colony into Libya; while the story of the Theræans, as recorded in the same author, was, that this injunction was laid on their king, Grinus, and that he pointed to Battus as a younger and fitter man for the purpose. According, again, to a fragment from the historian Menecles, preserved by Tzetzes, and the scholiast to Pindar,[1] Battus was driven forth from Thera by civil war, and was ordered by Apollo not to return to his country, but to betake himself to the continent. Justin gives a strange mixture of the two stories in Herodotus with the fable of Apollo’s love for the nymph Cyrene. Amidst these conflicting statements, the one certain is, that Battus led forth his colonists in obedience to the Delphic oracle, and under a belief in the protection of Apollo.

Sailing to the then almost unknown shores of Libya, Battus and his followers took possession of the island of Platea, in the Gulf of Bomba, which they seem to have mistaken for the mainland. Hence, after two years of suffering, and after again consulting the oracle, they removed to the opposite shore, and resided in the well-wooded district of Aziris for six years, at the end of which time some of the native Libyans persuaded them to leave it for a better locality, and conducted them through the region of Irasa to the actual site of Cyrene. Though Irasa was deemed so delectable a region that the Libyan guides were said to have led the Greeks through it in the night lest they should settle there, the spot at which their journey ended was scarcely inferior for beauty and fertility to any on the surface of the globe.

The site of Cyrene was in the territory of the Libyan tribe named Asbystæ, and with them the Greek settlers seem from the first to have been on terms of friendship very similar to those which subsisted between the Carthaginians and their Libyan neighbours. The Greeks had the immense advantage of commanding the abundant springs and fertile meadows, to which the Libyans were compelled to resort when the supplies of the less-favoured regions further inland began to fail. A close connection soon grew up between the natives and the Greek settlers; and not only did the former imitate the customs of the latter, but the two races coalesced to a much greater extent than was usual in such cases. It is very important to bear in mind that the population of Cyrene had a very large admixture of Libyan blood by the marriages of the early settlers with Libyan wives. The native Libyans, however, were altogether excluded from political power, which was in the hands exclusively of the descendants from the original settlers, or rather of those of them who had already been among the ruling class in the mother state of Thera.

The dynasty of the Battiadæ lasted during the greater part of two centuries, from B.C. 630 to somewhere between 460 and 430; and comprised eight kings, bearing the names of Battus and Arcesilaus alternately. After the foundation of Cyrene, little is known of Battus I. He appears to have been vigorous and successful in surmounting the difficulties which beset the infant colony, in making most of the natural advantages of the country, and in subjugating the native tribes. He governed with mildness and moderation, and executed various public works, of which the most celebrated was the road which he made for the sacred procession to the temple of Apollo. His subjects worshipped him as a hero, and dedicated a statue of him at Delphi, representing him in a chariot, driven by the nymph Cyrene, with Libya in the act of crowning him.

Nothing of importance is recorded in the reign of his son, Arcesilaus I., about B.C. 590-574; but that of his successor, Battus II., marks the most important period of the monarchy. In this reign, Cyrene received a great accession of strength by the influx of a large number of colonists from various parts of Greece, principally, perhaps, from Peloponnesus, and from Crete and the other islands, whom the State invited over under the promise of a new division of lands (probably to enable herself to make head against the neighbouring Libyans), and who were further urged to the migration by the Delphic oracle. This influx apparently giving rise to further encroachments on the Libyan tribes, the latter, under Adicran, their king, surrendered themselves to Apries, king of Egypt, and claimed his protection. A battle ensued in the region of Irasa, B.C. 570, in which the Egyptians were defeated—this being the first time, according to Herodotus, that they had ever come into hostile collision with Greeks. This battle seems to have finished the war with Egypt; for we read that Amasis, the successor of Apries, married Ladice, a Cyrenæan woman of the house of Battus. By the same victory, too, the sovereignty of Cyrene over the Libyans was confirmed. It was also most probably in this reign that Cyrene began to occupy the neighbouring region with her colonies.

The misfortunes of the monarchy began in the reign of Arcesilaus II., surnamed the “Oppressive,” about B.C. 554-544. By attempting to subvert the constitution and establish a despotism, he caused a revolt of the Libyan Periœci. His brothers, Perseus, Zacynthus, Aristomedon, and Lycus, who instigated this rebellion, withdrew from Cyrene, and founded the city of Barca. In his attempt to quell the insurrection, Arcesilaus was signally defeated in a battle fought at Leucon or Leucoë, in Marmarica, in which 7,000 of his soldiers were slain. He was afterwards treacherously killed by his own brother Learchus. The intestine troubles of Cyrene during the latter part of his reign, gave the inhabitants of the new city of Barca an opportunity of extending their power over the whole of the west part of the Cyrenaica, including the district on the coast (as far as Hesperides), where we find the important post of Teuchira belonging to them. According to Servius, they carried their arms on land far west over the region of the Syrtes, towards Carthage, and acquired such a maritime power as to defeat the Phœnicians in a naval battle.

Battus III., or the “Lame,” son of Arcesilaus II., reigned from about B.C. 544 to 529. During his reign, the Cyrenæans, under the advice of the Delphic oracle, called in the aid of Demonax, a Mantineian, who drew up for them a new constitution, by which the encroachments of the royal house on the people were more than recovered, and the king was reduced to political insignificance, retaining, however, the landed domain as his private property, and also his sacerdotal functions. The political power, in which it would seem none but the descendants of the original colonists had any share, was now extended to the whole Greek population, who were divided by Demonax into three tribes: (1) the Theræans, who still retained the native Periœci; (2) Greeks from Peloponnesus and Crete; (3) Greeks from the other islands of the Ægean. A senate was also constituted, of which the king appears to have been president. In other respects, the constitution seems to have resembled that of Sparta, which was, through Thera, the original metropolis of Cyrene.

Pheretime, the widow of Battus III., and mother of his successor, Arcesilaus III., joined with her son in an attempt to overturn the new constitution of Demonax. Their first efforts were unsuccessful, and they were driven from Cyrene; but Arcesilaus, who had taken refuge in Samos, returned with a fresh band of colonists, chiefly from Ionia, took Cyrene, and executed cruel vengeance on his opponents. He endeavoured to strengthen his position by making submission to Cambyses, king of Persia. From a superstitious fear of the woe denounced against him by an oracle for his cruelty in the hour of success, or, perhaps, driven out of the city by his subjects, he fled to his father-in-law, Alazir, king of Barca. There, certain exiles from Cyrene, uniting with the Barcæans, attacked both kings in the market-place, and killed them. His mother, Pheretime, thereupon applied for aid to Aryandes, who had been appointed Satrap of Egypt by Cambyses. Aryandes, who welcomed this opportunity of effecting the conquest of Libya, collected a powerful army and fleet; but, before commencing hostilities, he sent a herald to Barca, demanding to know who had slain Arcesilaus. The Barcæans, having collectively taken the act upon themselves, the desired pretext was gained, and Aryandes despatched the expedition. After a siege of nine months, the city was at last taken by treachery, and given over to the brutal revenge of Pheretime. Those of the citizens who were supposed to have had most share in her son’s death she impaled all round the circuit of the walls, on which she fixed as bosses the breasts of their wives. Those who were clearly guiltless of the murder were allowed to remain in the city, but the rest of the inhabitants were sent to Persia, where Darius settled them in a village of Bactria, still called Barca in the time of Herodotus. After the siege of Barca, Pheretime retired with the Persian army to Egypt, where, according to Herodotus, she died of a loathsome disease, for having “provoked the jealousy of the gods by the excessive indulgence of revenge.” Regarding her history, the following remark is made by Grote:—“It will be recollected that in the veins of this savage woman the Libyan blood was mixed with the Grecian. Political enmity in Greece proper kills, but seldom, if ever, mutilates or sheds the blood of women.”

The Persians ravaged great part of the country, and extended their conquests as far as Hesperides; and though they were even inclined to attack Cyrene on their way back to Egypt, they left the city unmolested. The result of the victory of Arcesilaus and Pheretime was the overthrow of the equitable constitution established by Demonax.

Of Battus IV., the successor of Arcesilaus III., nothing is known, except that he was surnamed the “Handsome.”

Arcesilaus IV., the last of the kings of Cyrene, is the prince whose victory in the Pythian Games, B.C. 466, is celebrated by Pindar. From his odes, it also appears that Arcesilaus IV. endeavoured to make himself despotic, by getting rid of the nobles of the state. It is probable that the city Hesperides was founded by him, with the view of securing a retreat for himself in the event of a successful rebellion of his subjects. It is not known whether he died by violence or not; but after his death royalty was abolished, and his son, Battus, who had fled to Hesperides, was there murdered, and his head was thrown into the sea,—a significant symbol of the utter extinction of the dynasty. This was probably about B.C. 450.

Of the condition of the new republic we have very little information. As to its basis, we are only told that the number of tribes and phratriæ was increased; and as to its working, that the constant increase of the democratic element led to violent party contests, in the course of which, various tyrants obtained power in the state; among whom are named Ariston and Nicocrates. When Alexander the Great invaded Egypt, the Cyrenæans made an alliance with him, and after his death their whole territory was made subject to Egypt by Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, B.C. 321. The country appears to have flourished under the Ptolemies, who pursued their usual policy of raising new cities at the expense of the ancient ones, or restoring the latter under new names. Thus Hesperides became Berenice; Teuchira was called Arsinöe; Barca was entirely eclipsed by its port, which was raised into a city under the name of Ptolemais; and Cyrene herself began to decay in consequence of the favours bestowed upon its port Apollonia. After these changes, _Pentapolis_ became the common name of the country.

The last king of the Egyptian dynasty, Apion, an illegitimate son of Ptolemy Physcon (on whose death, in B.C. 117, he had obtained the government), left the country to the Romans by his testament in the year B.C. 95. At first, the Romans granted the cities their freedom, and bestowed upon them their former royal domain, only exacting a tribute; but quarrels soon broke out between the different states, and after Lucullus had made, by order of Sylla, a vain attempt to reconcile them, the Romans applied their usual last remedy, and reduced the country to a province, under the name of Cyrenaica (probably in B.C. 75), which was united with Crete on the conquest of that island in B.C. 67. In the division of the provinces under Augustus, the united province, under the name of Creta-Cyrene, Creta et Cyrene, or Creta simply, was constituted a senatorial province under the government of a proprætor, with the title of proconsul, who had a legatus and one, if not two, quæstors. Under Constantine, Crete and Cyrenaica were made separate provinces, the latter being called Libya Superior, and placed under the government of a Præses. It should be observed, that under the Romans the eastern boundary of the province, which divided it from Marmarica, was formed by an imaginary line drawn southwards from Axylis, a town somewhat to the west of the Chersonesus Magna.

The decline of the country in prosperity may be dated chiefly from the reign of Trajan, when the Jews, large numbers of whom had settled there under the Ptolemies, rose in insurrection, massacred 220,000 Romans and Cyrenæans, and were put down with great difficulty and much slaughter. The loss of population during these bloody conflicts, and the increasing weakness of the whole empire, left the province an easy prey to the Libyan barbarians, whose attacks were aided by the ravages of locusts, plagues, and earthquakes. The sufferings of the Pentapolis from these causes, in the beginning of the fifth century, are pathetically described by Synesius, the bishop of Ptolemais, in an extant oration and in various passages of his letters; and at a later period by Procopius. In A.D. 616, the Persian Chosroes overthrew the remains of the Greek colonies so utterly, as to leave only the gleanings of the harvest of destruction to the Arab conquerors, who finally overran the country A.D. 647.—(Gibbon, VIII. 227, and IX. 444.)

At the height of its prosperity, Cyrene possessed an extensive commerce with Greece and Egypt, especially in the medical drug called Silphium: with Carthage its relations were always on a footing of great distrust, and its commerce on the west frontier was conducted entirely by smuggling. At what period its dominion over the Libyan tribes was extended so far as to meet that of Carthage at the bottom of the Greater Syrtis is disputed, some authorities referring it to the republican age, others to the period of the Ptolemies. Regarding the manner in which this boundary was settled, the following romantic story is told by Sallust:—

“The indefinite nature of the boundary between the territories of Carthage and Cyrene was the cause of many wars between them. After various alternate successes and defeats, they entered into the following agreement,—that certain persons deputed by each state should leave their home on an appointed day, and that the place where the parties might meet should be considered as the boundary of the kingdoms.

“Two brothers, named Philæni, were appointed on the part of Carthage, who contrived to travel faster than the deputies from Cyrene; but whether this was occasioned by accident or the indolence of the Cyrenæans, I have not been able to ascertain. Stormy weather might undoubtedly occasion delays in such a country, as well as it is known to do at sea; for when violent winds prevail in level and barren tracts, the sand which is raised by them is driven so forcibly into the faces and eyes of those who cross them, that their progress is considerably impeded. So soon as the people of Cyrene were aware of the ground which they had lost, and reflected on the punishment which would await them in consequence on their return, they began to accuse the Carthaginians of having set out before the appointed time; and when a dispute arose on the subject, they determined to brave everything rather than return home defeated. In this state of affairs, the Carthaginians desired the Greeks to name some conditions of accommodation; and when the latter proposed that the deputies from Carthage should either be buried on the spot which they claimed as the boundary, or allow them to advance as far as they chose on the same conditions, the Philæni immediately accepted the terms, and, giving themselves up to the service of their country, were buried alive on the spot where the dispute had occurred. On the same spot, two altars (Aræ Philænorum) were consecrated to their memory by the people of Carthage, and other honours were also decreed to them at home.”

By a comparison of the accounts of Ptolemy, Strabo, Pliny, and Mela, the Aræ Philænorum appear to have been situated near the bottom of the Greater Syrtis. At the time of Hannibal’s expedition to Italy, B.C. 217, they formed the eastern boundary of the Carthaginian territory.—(See Beechey, p. 220.)

Cyrene held a distinguished place in the records of Hellenic science. As early as the time of Herodotus, it was celebrated for its physicians: it gave its name to a philosophic sect founded by one of its sons, Aristippus; another, Carneades, was the founder of the Third or New Academy at Athens; and it was also the birthplace of Eratosthenes, who may be called the founder of astronomy, and who raised geography to the rank of a science; of the poet Callimachus, who boasted a descent from the royal house of Battus; and of the eloquent rhetorician Synesius, who afterwards became Bishop of Ptolemais.

The portion of the Cyrenaica actually occupied by the Greek colonists—viz., from the Boreum Promontorium on the west to the Chersonesus Magna on the east—was, in respect of position, formation, climate, and soil, one of the most delightful regions on the surface of the globe. Its centre is occupied by a moderately elevated table-land, whose edge runs parallel to the coast, to which it sinks down in a succession of terraces, clothed with verdure, intersected by mountain streams running through ravines filled with the richest vegetation, well watered by the frequent rains in winter, and sheltered by the mass of the mountain from the sands and hot winds of the Sahara. The various terraces enjoyed a great diversity of climates, and produced a corresponding variety of flowers, vegetables, and fruits; and the successive harvests, at the different elevations, lasted for eight months out of the twelve. The table-land extends some seventy or eighty miles in breadth between the Sahara and the coast, but it is only on its N. and N.W. slopes that it enjoys the physical advantages now described.

Among its products were corn, oil, wine; all kinds of fruit, especially dates, figs, and almonds; cucumbers, truffles, cabbage, box, and saffron; flowers, especially roses, from which exquisite perfumes were extracted; and, above all, the plant for which the country was especially celebrated,—viz., silphium or laserpitium,—which produced the valuable article of commerce already referred to. The district was also famous for its honey, its ostriches, and its horses, large studs of which were kept at Cyrene and at Barca.

Of the more recent history of the Cyrenaica there is little to be related. In consequence of the Arab occupation, the whole country relapsed into a state of barbarism, from which it has never emerged, the only important event in its history being its conquest by the Turks under Solyman the Magnificent, who took its modern capital, Tripoli, in 1551. Since that date, as part of Tripoli, it has formed a nominal portion of the Ottoman empire, owning a greater or less degree of subjection to the authority of the Sultan. Soon after its conquest by Solyman, it gradually fell, like Egypt, Tunis, and Algiers, into the power of an hereditary dynasty of Beys, who were all but independent of the Turkish government. In 1808, when this dynasty was expelled by Sultan Mahmoud, the state of Tripoli became a mere province or Pachalik, which has ever since been regarded as an integral portion of the Sultan’s dominions.

CYRENAICA. CORRECTED FROM THE SURVEYS OF CAPTS. SMYTH BEECHEY & SPRATT R.N.

Day & Son, Lithrs. to the Queen]