The Augustan edicts provide evidence that some Cyrenean citizens received Roman citizenship from Julius Caesar and Augustus.[452] A larger number subsequently obtained civitas from Claudius or Nero, and confirmation of Tiberius’ favour is perhaps to be seen in the placing of his statue in the so-called “Strategeion” in the Sanctuary by Sufenas Proculus.[453] In Tiberius’ reign, it should be noted, the city’s coinage experienced a brief rehabilitation, before it was replaced completely by Roman issues.[454] In 8 B.C. the well-to-do Jewish community of Berenice repaired and readorned its amphitheatre, designed to house its periodical gatherings.[455]
Little is known of the Cyrenean countryside in the first days of Roman rule. A bath-installation at Messa west of Cyrene belongs to this period, and the regular distribution of farmsteads east of the same area shggests that the lands here were contemporarily divided into fairly large farm-units. The inhabitants of the village of al-Gubba, east of Cyrene, found some reason to express their loyalty to the Emperor Claudius in an inscription set up in a public place.[456] A Roman military highway linked Cyrene with Phykus, the ancient harbour northwest of the city (today Ras al-Hammam), and can be plainly seen in air-photographs. Pliny the Elder wrote of the measuring of the distance from Phykus to Cape Criumetopon in Crete in the time of M. Vipsanius Agrippa,[457] and this operation may have had as its object the establishment of a mail-packet service between the two parts of the province. If so, the aforesaid highway was probably an Augustan work; several of Cyrenaica’s important roads, however, were paved or repaired, according to their milestones, by Claudius, among them being the routes from Cyrene to Apollonia and from Balagrae to Cyrene.[458]
The estates of Cyrene’s temples continued to exist and flourish, in the Roman period, on epigraphical evidence, since the revenues of Apollo (πρόσοδοι) are referred to under Augustus,[459] Nero,[460] Trajan,[461] and Hadrian,[462] also between the years 161-180.[463] The management of these domains was in all probability under the influence of the Roman government, for under Augustus (before 20 B.C.) the proconsul G. Lucanius Proculus made a dedication to Caesar with money given to him by the priests of Apollo.[464] The future emperor Vespasian, when serving as quaestor of Cyrene,[465] also discharged the priesthood of that deity,[466] and the same post was held in hi by a relative of Antonius Flamma, who had governed the province till the year 69.[467] The latter, indeed, was sued by the Cyreneans for corruption and brutality, and punished by exile.[468] This incident was by no means isolated, for the governors Caesius Cordus[469] and Pedius Blaesus[470] were called to account in a similar fashion for their misdeeds in Cyrene. The successful prosecution of these Cyrenean governors for robbery and fraud by the inhabitants they had governed, shows that Augustus’ machinery for the protection of the property of the subject was needed, and was not completely ineffective. Such action on the part of the people of Cyrene also permits the conjecture that they possessed a concilium or conventus provinciae participated in by the provincial notables; a similar institution existed in Crete,[471] and such assemblies in some measure secured representation of the provincials and protected their interests; the existence of such at Cyrene is the more likely in view of the title of “High Priest” (ἀρχιερεύς),[472] borne by the priest of Apollo at Cyrene and applied elsewhere to the priest of the imperial cult which formed the raison d’etre for these provincial conventions.
CHAPTER THREE
THE ECONOMY AND AGRICULTURE OF ANCIENT CYRENE
1. Physiography
Cyrenaica resembles most of the countries of the Mediterranean littoral in its division into a limestone belt and a tertiary plateau which intervenes between the mountains and the maritime plain.[473] But it differs from other mediterranean lands in that the red soils produced by the Miocene limestone, are to be found solely on the coastal terraces to north of the mountain plateau, or in depressions scattered along the plateau itself, while the alluvial valleys formed by the seaward runoff are very restricted in extent. On the southern plateau-slope the limestone is replaced bywhite-soil steppe, which finally fades into the Saharah. The red soils created by the insoluble limestone residues are in Cyrenaica not so leached by the rains as to lose their alkaline content, hence they are the most fertile soils of the region; they are also situated in areas where the rainfall is sufficient for cultivation, that is, north of the plateau and on it, at the most suitable altitudes for corn-growing, i.e. at 300-750 m above sea level. The red soils of the Jebel and its northern terraces have indeed been described as containing all the elements required for agriculture, possessing as they do a high percentage of phosphoric pentoxide.[474] On the other hand the qualities of these soils are offset by their restricted area and by the limited water supply at their disposal.
The country’s precipitation, concentrated between the months of October and May, varies in quantity from 10 to 1000 mm. according to locality, the highest rainfall being in the vicinity of Cyrene, a fact justifying the Libyan observation concerning that district (as reported by Herodotus) that “here the sky leaks” (ὁ οὐρανὸς τέτραται).[475] But average rainfall varies greatly from year to year, and a drought is expected every fourth year. The seasonal incidence, nevertheless, is of maximum utility to the cultivator, since it comes at a time when cool weather restricts evaporation. On the other hand the country suffers from a rainless summer of five months; and unlike several Mediterranean lands, the permeable miocene rocks of Cyrenaica do not overlie impermeable strata over which quantities of subterranean water can accumulate to break out as springs from the escarpments, or to be tapped by means of artesian wells. This function is discharged by marl strata of limited extent distributed over the plateau in comparatively few localities, such as Cyrene, al-Gubba and Messa, and the plains of Barka and Silene (al-Abbiar). The winter concentration of rainfall enables the accumulation to runoff in cisterns or by means of dams, but its quantity is not such as to make possible the irrigation of wide areas. According to one estimate made in recent years.[476] the entire spring-water of the Plateau is sufficient to irrigate no more than 4,000 hectares fully or 10,000 has. partially.
453
471
E. de Ruggiero,
474
J. W. Gregory,
475
Herod. IV, 158, 3. Theophrastus, after describing the increase of trees and the growth of their bark as a result of heavier rainfall, “as in Cyrene”, writes: (
476
The International Bank of Reconstruction and Development,