History of Libya - Berber Roman Libya

Berber Roman Libya

The Romans conquered Tripolitania (the region around Tripoli) in 106 BC. Ptolemy Apion, the last Greek ruler, bequeathed Cyrenaica to Rome, which formally annexed the region in 74 BC and joined it to Crete as a Roman province. By 64 BC, Julius Caesar's legions had established their occupation, and the Romans had thus unified all three regions of Libya (Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and northern Fezzan) in one single new province called Africa proconsularis (later Cyrenaica was separated administratively).

As a Roman province, Libya was prosperous, and reached a golden age in the 2nd century AD, when the city of Leptis Magna rivalled Carthage and Alexandria in prominence. For more than 400 years, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were wealthy Roman provinces and part of a cosmopolitan state whose citizens shared a common language, legal system, and Roman identity. Roman ruins like those of Leptis Magna, extant in present-day Libya, attest to the vitality of the region, where populous cities and even smaller towns enjoyed the amenities of urban life - the forum, markets, public entertainments, and baths - found in every corner of the Roman Empire. Merchants and artisans from many parts of the Roman world established themselves in coastal Libya and the province was greatly "Romanized", according to Theodore Mommsen. But the character of the cities of Tripolitania remained partially Punic and, in Cyrenaica, Greek. The predominant religion was Christianity, but there was even a huge Jewish community (mainly in Cyrenaica).

Tripolitania was a major exporter of olive oil (produced there with the Centenaria farm system, protected by the Limes Tripolitanus), as well as a centre for the gold and slaves conveyed to the coast by the Garamentes, while Cyrenaica remained an important source of wines, drugs, and horses.

As part of his reorganization of the empire in 300 AD, the Emperor Diocletian separated the administration of Crete from Cyrenaica and in the latter formed the new provinces of "Upper Libya" and "Lower Libya", using the term Libya for the first time as an administrative designation. With the definitive partition of the empire in 395 AD, the Libyans of Cirenaica were assigned to the eastern empire; Tripolitania was attached to the Western Roman empire.