page_title: Libya in the Roman era
section_title: Last centuries
hierarchical_section_title: Libya in the Roman era / Last centuries
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Sabratha - Säulen des Jupiter-Tempels
context_page_description: The area of North Africa which has been known as Libya since 1911 was under Roman domination between 146 BC and 672 AD. The Latin name Libya at the time referred to the continent of Africa in general. What is now coastal Libya was known as Tripolitania and Pentapolis, divided between the Africa province in the west, and Creta et Cyrenaica in the east. In 296 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 as a political state for the first time in history.
context_section_description: After Septimius Severus Roman Libya slowly declined for the next century of so, before being destroyed by the tsunami of 365 AD. A recovery faltered, and well before the Arab invasion in the mid-7th century, Greco-Roman civilization had been collapsing in the area except Oea.
  As part of his reorganization of the empire in 296 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 in history as an administrative designation. Indeed, the Tetrarchy reforms of Diocletian  changed the administrative structure:
  Cyrenaica was split into two provinces: "Libya Superior" or "Libia Pentapolis", that comprised the above-mentioned Pentapolis with Cyrene as capital, and "Libya Inferior" or "Libia sicca", the Marmarica with the only significant city Paraetonium, each under a governor of the modest rank of praeses. Both belonged to the Diocese of Egypt, within the Praetorian prefecture of Oriens.
  Tripolitania, the largest split-off from Africa proconsularis, became part of the Diocese of Africa, subordinate to the prefecture of Italia et Africa. After the devastating tsunami of 365, the capital of Cyrenaica was moved to Ptolemais. With the definitive partition of the Roman empire in 395 AD, Tripolitania was attached to the Western Roman empire, while Cyrenaica to the eastern empire, later called Byzantine. It was briefly part of the Vandal Kingdom to the west, until its reconquest by Belisarius in 533 AD.
  In April 534 AD, the former Roman provincial system along with the full apparatus of Roman administration was restored, under a praetorian prefect. During the following years, under the smart general Solomon, who combined the offices of both magister militum and praetorian prefect of Africa, Roman rule in Libya was strengthened (Theodorias was refounded ), but the fighting continued against the Berber tribes on the hinterland.
  Solomon achieved significant successes against them, but his work was interrupted by a widespread military mutiny in 536. The mutiny was eventually subdued by Germanus, a cousin of Justinian, and Solomon returned in 539. He fell, however, in the Battle of Cillium in 544 against the united berber tribes, and Roman Libya was again in jeopardy. It would not be until 548 AD that the resistance of the Berber tribes would be finally broken by the talented general John Troglita. The last Latin epic poem of Antiquity, the de Bellis Libycis of Flavius Cresconius Corippus was written about this struggle.
  Successively the province entered an era of relative stability and prosperity, and was organized as a separate exarchate in 584 AD. Eventually, under Heraclius, Libia and Africa would come to the rescue of the Empire itself, deposing the tyrant Phocas and beating back the Sassanids and the Avars.
  But that was the last Roman achievement: in 642 AD Moslem Arabs started to conquer Libya. The Arabs succeeded in temporarily driving the Byzantines out of Tripoli in 645 AD, but they did not follow that conquest with the establishment of a permanent Arab presence in the city. No further raids were conducted until 661, when the new Umayyad dynasty under Mu'awiya ushered in a new era of Muslim expansion. An official campaign to conquer North Africa began in 663, and the Arabs soon controlled most major cities in Libya. Tripoli fell again in 666 AD, and this time the Muslims ensured their control of their new lands by not immediately retreating to Egypt after the conquest.
  In 670 AD all Libya was in the hands of the Arabs: Roman rule since BCE 2nd century finally ended. Only in Benito Mussolini's time, more than one thousand years later, Libya was recreated as a political entity in 1934 (with a name borrowed from the Diocletian reforms).
caption: Sabratha: Temple of Jupiter
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