Republic of Cyrene

Origins

Around 440 BCE the last Battiad king, Arcesilaus IV, was overthrown and the Kingdom of Cyrene became a republic. The city remained the leading power of Cyrenaica, a group of Greek cities later called the Pentapolis, together with Barca, Euesperides, Taucheira and its own port, Apollonia.

Rule and society

Government swung between democracy and oligarchy, with bloody civil strife in the early 4th century BCE. Cyrene remained rich from silphium, grain and horses, and it treated with Carthage over its western border at the Altars of the Philaeni. It was an intellectual centre: Aristippus founded the Cyrenaic school of philosophy, and the mathematician Theodorus taught there. Cyrene submitted to Alexander the Great in 331 BCE.

Decline and legacy

In 324 to 322 BCE the Spartan adventurer Thibron attacked the city, and its factions called in Ptolemy I, whose general Ophellas annexed Cyrene to the Ptolemaic Empire in 322 BCE. It later became the centre of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Cyrene.