Punics The
Punic city was founded in the second half of the 7th centuryBC. Little is known about Leptis during this time, but it appears to have been powerful enough to repel
Dorieus's attempt to establish a Greek colony nearby around 515BC. Like most Punic settlements, Leptis became part of the
Carthaginian Empire and fell under
Rome's control with
Carthage's defeat in the
Punic Wars. Leptis remained highly independent for a period after about 111BC.
Roman Republic The
Roman Republic sent some colonists together with a small garrison in order to control the city. The city prospered and was even allowed to coin its own money in silver and bronze. Reflecting its blend of cultures, its coins bore
Punic inscriptions but images of
Hercules and
Dionysus. The 40-20s BC saw large amounts of Italians begin to settle in North Africa mostly from being dispossessed from their land. Italian merchants also began to settle in Leptis Magna and started a profitable commerce with the Libyan interior. The city depended primarily on the fertility of its surrounding farmland, where many olive-presses have been excavated. By 46BC, its
olive oil production was of such an extent that the city was able to provide three million pounds of oil annually to
Julius Caesar as tax.
Roman Empire Kenneth D. Matthews Jr. writes: Leptis Magna remained as such until the reign of the Roman emperor
Tiberius, when the city and the surrounding area were formally incorporated into the empire as part of the province of
Africa. It soon became one of the leading cities of Roman Africa and a major trading post. The city grew rapidly under Roman administration. During the reign of
Nero, an
amphitheater was constructed. The settlement was elevated to
municipium in AD 64 or 65 and to
colonia under
Trajan (). The first known
bishop of Leptis Magna was a certain priest called
Victor who became pope in 189. Leptis achieved its greatest prominence beginning in AD193, as the hometown of emperor
Septimius Severus. Severus came from a wealthy family in the city as his grandfather was chief magistrate of Leptis Magna under the
Emperor Trajan who elevated the city to colonial rank. Even after becoming emperor, Severus's own family would continue to inhabit the city. Severus favored his hometown above all other provincial cities, investing in its development which would establish the city as the third largest port in the
Mediterranean during the third century. In 205 AD, he and the imperial family visited the city and bestowed great honors. Among the changes that Severus introduced were the creation of a magnificent new
forum and the rebuilding of the docks. The natural harbor had a tendency to silt up, but the Severan changes made this worse, and the eastern wharves are extremely well preserved, since they were scarcely used. Leptis prospered through
trans-Saharan trade in various valuable goods, including
ivory, wild animals for the
gladiatorial arena, gold dust,
carbuncle, precious woods like
ebony, and
ostrich feathers. Leptis overextended itself during this period. During the
Crisis of the 3rd Century, when trade declined precipitously, Leptis Magna's importance also fell into a decline, and by the middle of the 4th century, even before it was completely devastated by the
365 tsunami, large parts of the city had been abandoned.
Ammianus Marcellinus recounts that the crisis was worsened by a corrupt Roman governor named Romanus, who demanded bribes to protect the city during a major tribal raid. The ruined city could not pay these and complained to the emperor
Valentinian I. Romanus then bribed people at court and arranged for the Leptan envoys to be punished "for bringing false accusations". It enjoyed a minor renaissance beginning in the reign of the emperor
Theodosius I.
Vandal Kingdom In 439, Leptis Magna and the rest of the cities of
Tripolitania fell under the control of the
Vandals when their king,
Gaiseric, captured Carthage from the Romans and made it his capital. Unfortunately for the future of Leptis Magna, Gaiseric ordered the city's walls demolished so as to dissuade its people from rebelling against Vandal rule. The people of Leptis and the Vandals both paid a heavy price for this in AD523 when a group of Berber raiders sacked the city.
Byzantine Empire Belisarius, general of Emperor
Justinian I, recaptured Leptis Magna in the name of the Roman Empire ten years later, and
in 533–4 it was re-incorporated into the empire. Leptis became a provincial capital of the Eastern Empire, but never recovered from the destruction wreaked upon it by the Berbers. In 544, under the prefecture of Sergius, the city came under intensified attack of Berber tribes, and after some successes, Sergius was reduced to retreating into the city, with the
Leuathae tribal confederation camped outside the gate demanding payments. Sergius admitted eighty deputies into the city to present their demands, but when Sergius moved to leave the conference he was detained by the robe by one deputy and crowded by others. This provoked an officer of the prefect's guard to kill the deputy laying hands on the prefect, which resulted in a general massacre. The Berbers reacted with an all-out attack and Sergius was eventually forced to abandon Leptis and retreat to Carthage.
Islamic conquest By the 6th century, the city was fully Christianized. During the decade 565–578 AD, Christian missionaries from Leptis Magna even began to move once more among the Berber tribes as far south as the
Fezzan in the Libyan desert and converted the
Garamantes. Numerous new churches were built in the 6th century, but the city continued to decline, and by the time of the
Arab conquest around 647 the city was mostly abandoned except for a Byzantine garrison force and a population of less than 1,000 inhabitants. By the 10th century, the city of
Al-Khums had fully absorbed it.
Excavation Today, the site of Leptis Magna is the site of some of the most well preserved ruins of the Roman period. , by the
Virginia Water Lake Part of an ancient temple was brought from Leptis Magna to the British Museum in 1816 and installed at the
Fort Belvedere royal residence in England in 1826. It now lies in part of
Windsor Great Park. The ruins are located between the south shore of
Virginia Water and Blacknest Road close to the junction with the
A30 London Road and
Wentworth Drive. When Italians conquered
Italian Libya in the early 20th century, they dedicated huge efforts to the rediscovery of Leptis Magna. One of the first buildings uncovered during Renato Bartoccini 1925-1926 excavation was the
Arch of Septimius Severus at Leptis Magna. Bartoccini's preliminary finds were published in
Africa Italiana 4 in 1931. In the early 1930s, Italian archeological research was able to show again the buried remains of nearly all the city. A 4th to 3rd centuryBC necropolis was found under the
Roman theatre. In June 2005, it was revealed that archaeologists from the
University of Hamburg had been working along the coast of Libya when they uncovered a 30
ft length of five colorful
mosaics created during the 1st or 2nd century. The mosaics show with exceptional clarity depictions of a warrior in combat with a deer, four young men wrestling a wild bull to the ground, and a gladiator resting in a state of fatigue and staring at his slain opponent. The mosaics decorated the walls of a cold plunge pool in a
balneae within a
Roman villa at Wadi Lebda in Leptis Magna. The gladiator mosaic is noted by scholars as one of the finest examples of representational mosaic art ever seen—a "masterpiece comparable in quality with the
Alexander Mosaic in
Pompeii." The mosaics were originally discovered in the year 2000 but were kept secret in order to avoid looting. They are currently on display in the
Leptis Magna Museum. There were reports that Leptis Magna was used as a cover for tanks and military vehicles by pro-Gaddafi forces during the
First Libyan Civil War in 2011. When asked if the historic site could be targeted in an airstrike,
NATO refused to rule out the possibility of such an action, saying that it had not been able to confirm the rebels' report that weapons were being hidden at the location. Shortly after the war, Libyan archaeologist Hafed Walda reported that Leptis Magna, along with nearby Rasaimergib Fort and the western
Tripolis of
Sabratha, had "so far seen no visible loss" from either fighting on the ground or
bombings conducted by international forces. In the midst of the
Second Libyan Civil War and the disappearance of governmental and international support for the site, people living in the area organized to voluntarily protect and maintain Leptis Magna. ==Climate change==