Wanderings in North Africa

by traveler James Hamilton

The history, as it has come down to us, begins with a period of profound obscurity, which clouds the reigns of Battus and his son Arcesilaus. To the latter succeeded Battus II., Eudaimon, Felix the Happy. His reign was the golden age of Cyrenæan tradition. Fresh settlers from the mother country brought increased prosperity to the colony. Their territory became too narrow for its inhabitants, who, gradually spreading over the surrounding country, drove out the Libyan nomads; and thus the foundations of a power were securely laid, which soon gave (with the possession of a sea-port, Apollonia) a new impulse to enterprise. Teuchira and Hesperides were afterwards founded to the westward, and Barce—long the most flourishing of the daughter-cities, and at one time the rival of the metropolis—whose name is still perpetuated in the Turkish province of Barka. The native nomads did not, however, relinquish their pasture grounds without a struggle; they implored the assistance of the Egyptian king Apries, and the surname of Happy was, perhaps, earned at the fountain of Theste (Kubbeh?), where Battus defeated his troops. The Libyans were now subdued; the victors intermarried with the daughters of the soil; Greek genius was not long in adopting some, at least, of the mythology of their subjects; and thus a permanent dominion, supported by force, consanguinity, and religion, was established by the conqueror.

But it was not long before the monarchy was weakened by the defection of the brothers of Arcesilaus II., son of Battus Felix, who, retiring from their brother’s capital, founded Barce, and soon formed around it an independent territory, peopled, like the new city itself, for the most part by Libyans. Civil discord now divided the colony, and bloody feuds stained the royal house. The constitution, thus undermined by popular tumults and by regal encroachments, or weakness, threatened to involve in its ruin the material prosperity of the colony. In this conjuncture, the Cyrenæans again applied to the Pythian Oracle for advice, and Demonax, the Mantinean, was deputed by the god to restore order; he gained the good-will of all parties, and established new institutions, which greatly curtailed the royal power, but which were maintained during the reign of the third Battus. His son and successor, Arcesilaus III., not content to follow in his father’s steps, and impatient of restraint, was driven into exile by the insurrection which his arbitrary conduct had aroused; but soon returning, with Samian reinforcements, he repossessed himself of a power which he now used with uncurbed barbarity.

Such was the situation of affairs, when the Persian conquest of Egypt threatened to destroy the political independence of Cyrene. The king, not daring to trust his disaffected subjects (after promising tribute to his new neighbour), retired to Barce, where he continued the cruelties which had rendered him odious in his own dominions. He and his father-in-law, the king of Barce, were soon afterwards murdered. His mother fled to Egypt, and claimed the protection of the Persian Suzerain, with whose troops returning she laid siege to Barce, and savagely revenged the assassination of her son. Cyrene, by timely concessions, escaped uninjured from the Persian raid. Another Battus and a fourth Arcesilaus reigned in it with mingled feebleness and severity; in their hands the royal power lost all consideration, and on the death of the last, royalty was abolished. A free republic, aristocratic rather than democratic, now took its place, accompanied by all the party contests and all the civil seditions of which the history of the mother-country shows so many examples. To this unsettled condition of its government must be ascribed the fact, that, notwithstanding its situation—equally favourable to commerce as that of Carthage—and its infinitely more fertile soil, Cyrene never, either in the arts of war or in the arts of peace, rivalled the city of Dido. A love of turbulence and feuds seems to have formed an essential feature of the Greek character; all the efforts which, from time to time, were made by her wiser citizens to introduce better order into the republic, were vain. At last they applied to the divine Plato, requesting him to furnish them with a code of laws; and posterity regrets that he was too prudent to compromise his reputation, by legislating for so turbulent a community.

Alexander’s apparition in Egypt was followed by a treaty which seemed to guarantee the independence of Cyrene; but after his death intestine troubles and the solicitations of exiles (who, for whatever cause expelled their country, are ever its worst enemies) attracted armed bands into their fertile provinces. These marauders seized the ports, twice besieged the capital, and filled the country with rapine and ruin, which neither the aid of Carthage nor of the Libyan nomads could stay. At last, one stronger than either party, Ptolemy, who had succeeded to Alexander in Egypt, sent a fleet and troops and re-established tranquillity, B.C. 322—a service which he turned to his own profit, so that Cyrene became thereafter for many years a province of Egypt, under the name of Pentapolis.

Unaccustomed to a regular government, the turbulent Cyrenæans bore the yoke impatiently. Revolt followed revolt, and the Egyptian viceroy himself rebelled against his master. But these vain attempts at forming an independent government only sunk the Pentapolis in deeper misery. It was about the time that the first Jewish colonies were introduced, in conformity with the general policy of Ptolemy; and they soon became so numerous here, that, at length, no other country besides Palestine, contained so many individuals of their nation. Enjoying equal rights with the Greeks and the special favour of the king, they formed in the end a fourth order in the State, and were governed by municipal magistrates of their own. That they had a separate synagogue at Jerusalem, we learn from the Acts of the Apostles, vi. 9; and their frequent mention in the New Testament proves how important a part of the Jewish nation they constituted. They distinguished themselves under Trajan by a rebellion, in which they exhibited great ferocity; this rebellion was only suppressed after immense slaughter had taken place on both sides.

The reign of the third Ptolemy was a remarkable era for Cyrene. The original laws delivered by Demonax the Arcadian had been retained (with what corruption or modifications we know not) up to this time; but now, with the king’s consent, the people called in two distinguished natives of Megalopolis in the same province, Ecdemus and Demophanes—disciples of the philosopher Arcesilaus—to revise them. These two, as the historian informs us, “restored the public peace and the safety of the citizens.” The history of the following years is generally obscure; but enough remains to show, that this tranquillity was not of long duration, and tumults and rebellions continued to weaken the country till Ptolemy Apion, on his death, B.C. 96, bequeathed it to the Roman Senate. About twenty years later, after a vain attempt had been made to leave it in the enjoyment of self-government, it was merged into a Roman province in conjunction with Crete. It was, perhaps, in his administration of this quæstorship, that Vespasian first came in contact with the Jews. In the division of the empire, it fell to the share of Constantinople, and was exempt from none of the miseries which afflicted the distant provinces of the empire in its decay. The subsequent desolation of the country is described in the inflated eloquence of his time by the rhetorician Synesius, the Platonist bishop of Ptolemaïs, who, in espousing his church, refused to part with his wife. The nomad tribes gradually regained the ascendancy, driving out the more civilised inhabitants; and from the date of the Arab occupation, which immediately followed the conquest of Egypt, we hear no more of the Cyrenaica, excepting what is given of it in the short notice, which Abulfida has inserted in his Geography, under the head of Barka. It now forms the eastern part of the Turkish pachalik of Tripoli, divided into two prefectures, Benghazi and Derna, which are the only inhabited towns remaining in its whole extent.

The sources of wealth which the Cyrenaica presented were many and valuable. Its trade with the interior of Africa, by way of Augila, furnished for exportation ivory, gold, precious stones, ostrich feathers, and slaves—the same products which the triennial caravan from Waday, at the present day, brings to Benghazi. Judging, however, from the accounts of the ancients, from the remains of the splendid caravanserais which we meet with on this route, the trade must have been conducted on a far greater scale than at the present time. Pindar refers to the commercial navy of Cyrene, by means of which an active commerce was carried on with the main land, the islands of Greece, and the coasts of Asia Minor. Of the indigenous produce of this country, the first in rank, both for value and utility, was derived from the silphium, which yielded a gummy juice, the laserpitium, esteemed by the ancients as a remedy for almost every disease. So universal was its fame that it gave a common epithet to the country; and the “Silphium of Battus” is used by Aristophanes as a synonym for exceeding wealth. It was a government monopoly, and in Rome was sold for an equal weight of silver. It is mentioned, if I mistake not, among the treasures which Cæsar laid hold of at the commencement of the civil wars. Theophrastus and Pliny describe the method of its cultivation, though, from the expressions used by other authors, it seems to have grown wild in the desert places; but, however obtained, it undoubtedly yielded a large revenue to the country.

The olive flourished with remarkable fruitfulness in its soil; and the immense tracts which are at the present day still covered with it, proves how extensive its cultivation must once have been, and how congenial to it is the soil in which, after ages of neglect, it still flourishes. Its crops of grain were as abundant as those of Mauritius and Sicily, and furnished large exports. During four months of my stay in the country I ate ripe grapes, and in one place I left the half-formed fruit hanging in rich clusters from the vines; so true is the ancient description which, speaking of the various climates of the Cyrenaica, says, that the harvest lasted nine months, beginning in the low grounds, then ascending to the table-lands, and ending in the hills. The flowers of the Cyrenaica were also celebrated, and the ground is still enamelled with a rich flora; the crocus officinalis furnished a considerable article of export, and its roses yielded the finest attar distilled for its Egyptian Queen. The honey almost vied with that of Hymettus, and in some places it is still gathered by the Arabs, who send it in presents to their distant friends. The herds and flocks which Pindar celebrates are still the wealth of its nomad inhabitants. The breed of horses was remarkable for fleetness and endurance; and the war-chariots in which they were harnessed were as celebrated as the skill of the drivers who conducted them.

But the ancients do not confine their praises to the natural productions of the soil. Cyrene was fruitful, also, in men distinguished in the arts and sciences. Architecture and the engraving of precious stones were both carried to great perfection by the Cyrenæans. Of their skill in painting and sculpture few evidences have reached us. It was in the liberal arts that they especially shone; and a long list might be produced of men of letters and science who adorned their birthplace or spread its fame in other lands. The poems of Callimachus, a Cyrenæan of noble birth, prove that the noblest exercise of genius was not neglected. But the brightest lustre is shed upon the African Doria by its mathematicians, physicians, and philosophers. Eratosthenes, the poet, philosopher, and geometer, may also be called the Father of Geography. But all are eclipsed by the fame of Aristippus, his daughter Arete, and her son Aristippus (the mother-taught), who founded, and to the third generation sustained, the glory of the Cyrenæan School of Philosophy—a rare, perhaps a singular instance of such mental gifts descending, as it were, by inheritance. We know the doctrines of this school only by the writings of its adversaries; we are not, therefore, qualified to pronounce judgment upon them. In the original teaching it seems rather to have been a contradiction to the stoic and cynical doctrines, establishing enjoyment as the chief end of man, allied to moral freedom—a philosophical enjoyment, which consists in using all the good things which Providence has showered upon us. This was a doctrine not discordant with the habits and genius of the people with whom it originated. If later disciples of this school contended that the true philosophy of life consists in the pursuits of voluptuousness, or, exaggerating even this doctrine, taught that virtue for itself is despicable, that no Deity exists, and that, since pain cannot be entirely avoided, life itself is detestable—we may regard such aberrations as the declamatory sophistries of ill-regulated genius, not as the real opinions of a school whose first teacher sat at the feet of Socrates.

I shall conclude by mentioning the authors who in modern times have called attention to this country. Our guide in all that relates to its ancient condition is the learned Dane Thrige, who, in his work “Res Cyrenensium,” has exhausted all the information that the most ingenious acuteness could extract from the writers of antiquity. Of modern observers, the first in point of time is Leo Africanus, who, with naïve simplicity, describes the Desert of Barka as a hideous waste, peopled only by barbarians sunk in the most abject poverty. Early in the eighteenth century, Lemaire, quoted by Paul Lucas, was sent to explore the ruins which it was reported to contain, by Louis XIV. After him, Shaw and Bruce visited some parts of the province; but the first work which treated in detail of its antiquities was that of the French artist Pacho, whose untimely end prevented his reaping the laurels which his enterprising genius had planted. He may be regarded as the re-discoverer of the remains of Greek civilisation in this part of Africa. The work which he produced under incredible difficulties is remarkable among modern books of travel as a monument of industry and daring; and I here gratefully acknowledge the amount of enjoyment for which I was indebted to it during my tour. To his name it is only just to add that of Beechey, whose accounts and scientific labours have deprived future authors of the right to intrude upon their readers the results of geographical observations. The plans and map which accompany his work are of great value. Two Italian travellers, anterior in point of time to the last-mentioned, must not be forgotten, viz. Della Cella, a Genoese physician, who in the suite of the Bey of Benghazi, visited this country in 1819, and published an account of his travels, which, though not without merit, leave much to be desired in accuracy; and a merchant Crevelli, whose meagre journal was published by the French Society of Geography. The last of the few travellers who have penetrated into these almost unknown regions is Dr. Barth, on whose hazardous attempt to reach the central kingdoms of Africa the eyes of Europe are now turned with equal hope and admiration. May the desert which has devoured so many valuable lives, spare his to the advancement of science and civilisation!