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Libya
Index
Figure 2. Libya in Antiquity
Enterprising Phoenician traders were active throughout the
Mediterranean area before the twelfth century B.C. The depots that
they set up at safe harbors on the African coast to service,
supply, and shelter their ships were the links in a maritime chain
reaching from the Levant to Spain. Many North African cities and
towns originated as Phoenician trading posts, where the merchants
of Tyre (in present-day Lebanon) eventually developed commercial
relations with the Berber tribes and made treaties with them to
ensure their cooperation in the exploitation of raw materials. By
the fifth century B.C., Carthage, the greatest of the overseas
Phoenician colonies, had extended its hegemony across much of North
Africa, where a distinctive civilization, known as Punic, came into
being. Punic settlements on the Libyan coast included Oea
(Tripoli), Labdah (later Leptis Magna), and Sabratah, in an area
that came to be known collectively as Tripolis, or "Three Cities"
(see
fig. 2).
Governed by a mercantile oligarchy, Carthage and its
dependencies cultivated good relations with the Berber tribes in
the hinterland, but the city-state was essentially a maritime power
whose expansion along the western Mediterranean coast drew it into
a confrontation with Rome in the third century B.C. Defeated in the
long Punic Wars (264-241 and 218-201 B.C.), Carthage was reduced by
Rome to the status of a small and vulnerable African state at the
mercy of the Berbers. Fear of a Carthaginian revival, however, led
Rome to renew the war, and Carthage was destroyed in 146 B.C.
Tripolitania was assigned to Rome's ally, the Berber king of
Numidia. A century later, Julius Caesar deposed the reigning
Numidian king, who had sided with Pompey (Roman general and
statesman, rival of Julius Caesar) in the Roman civil wars, and
annexed his extensive territory to Rome, organizing Tripolitania as
a Roman province.
The influence of Punic civilization on North Africa remained
deep-seated. The Berbers displayed a remarkable gift for cultural
assimilation, readily synthesizing Punic cults with their folk
religion. The Punic language was still spoken in the towns of
Tripolitania and by Berber farmers in the coastal countryside in
the late Roman period.
Data as of 1987
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