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]
430
Alfoldi ap.
437
442
443
Ptolemais,