Leptis Magna

Leptis Magna (also Lepcis; Neo-Punic lpqy) was a prominent city in Roman Libya. Originally a Punic foundation, it was greatly expanded under emperor Septimius Severus (r. 193–211), who was a native of the city. Legio III Augusta was stationed here to defend the city against Berber incursions, and after the legion's dissolution under Gordian III in 238, the city was increasingly open to raids in the later part of the 3rd century. Diocletian re-instated the city as provincial capital, and the city grew again in prosperity until it fell to the Vandals in 439. It was re-incorporated into the Eastern Empire in 533, but continued to be plagued by Berber raids and never recovered its former importance. It fell to the Muslim invasion in c. 647 and was abandoned.

The ruins of Leptis Magna are located in Khoms, Libya, 130 km east of Tripoli, on the coast where the Wadi Lebda meets the sea. The site is one of best preserved Roman ruins in the Mediterranean.

Name
The Latin name was Lepcis Magna (also spelled Leptis in some inscriptions; also Leptimagnensis Civitas, adjective Leptitanos, Leptitanus) The Greek name was Λέπτις μεγάλη Leptis megale or Νεάπολις Neapolis. The city was called "Greater" (magna, he megale) in contrast with Leptis Parva  in modern-day Tunisia. The Neo-Punic (Roman era) name is recorded as lpqy (or  '-lpqy, with article). The name appears to be Semitic in origin, tentatively connected to the Arabic root lfq "to fabricate, piece together", taken to refer to the foundation or construction of the city. The modern Arabic name is لَبْدَة Labdah.

History
The Punic city was founded in the second half of the 7th century BC. Little is known about the old city, but it appears to have been powerful enough to repel Dorieus' attempt to establish a Greek colony nearby in c. 515 BC. A 4th to 3rd century BC necropolis was found under the Roman theatre. It nominally remained part of Carthage's dominions until the end of the Third Punic War in 146 BC and then became part of the Roman Republic, although from about 111 BC onward, it was for all intents and purposes an independent city.

"During the reign of Augustus, Leptis Magna was classified as a Civitas libera et immunis, or a free community, over which the governor had an absolute minimum of control. As such Leptis retain its two suphetes at the head of its government, with the mhzm, similar to the Roman aediles, as minor magistrates. In addition there were such sacred officials as the 'addir 'ararim or praefectus sacrorum, the nēquim ēlīm, and probably a sacred college of fifteen members. These offices were still in effective operation when Leptis was made a "Municipium" with a certain degree of Roman rights and privileges at some time between 61 and 68 A.D., during the rule of Nero."

The city depended primarily on the fertility of its surrounding farmland, where many olive-presses have been excavated. As early as 46 BC, its olive oil production was of such an extent that the city was levied by Caesar with a tax of three million pounds of oil annually. The Roman Republic sent some colonists together with a small garrison in order to control the city. Since then the city started to grow and was even allowed to create its own money (coins). Soon Italian merchants settled in the city and started a profitable commerce with the Libyan interior.

Leptis Magna remained as such until the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius, when the city and the surrounding area were formally incorporated into the empire as part of the province of Africa. It soon became one of the leading cities of Roman Africa and a major trading post. The city grew rapidly under Roman administration. It was elevated to municipium in AD 64/5 and to colonia under Trajan (r. 98 –117)

Leptis achieved its greatest prominence beginning in AD 193, as the hometown of emperor Septimius Severus. Septimius favored his hometown above all other provincial cities, and the buildings and wealth he lavished on it made Leptis Magna the third-most important city in Africa, rivaling Carthage and Alexandria. In AD 205, he and the imperial family visited the city and received great honors. Among the changes that Severus introduced were to create a magnificent new forum and to rebuild the docks. The natural harbour had a tendency to silt up, but the Severan changes made this worse, and the eastern wharves are extremely well preserved, since they were scarcely used.

Leptis over-extended itself at this period. During the Crisis of the 3rd Century, when trade declined precipitously, Leptis Magna's importance also fell into a decline, and by the middle of the 4th century, even before it was completely devastated by the 365 tsunami, large parts of the city had been abandoned. Ammianus Marcellinus recounts that the crisis was worsened by a corrupt Roman governor named Romanus during a major tribal raid who demanded bribes to protect the city. The ruined city could not pay these and complained to the emperor Valentinian I. Romanus then bribed people at court and arranged for the Leptan envoys to be punished "for bringing false accusations". It enjoyed a minor renaissance beginning in the reign of the emperor Theodosius I.

In 439, Leptis Magna and the rest of the cities of Tripolitania fell under the control of the Vandals when their king, Gaiseric, captured Carthage from the Romans and made it his capital. Unfortunately for the future of Leptis Magna, Gaiseric ordered the city's walls demolished so as to dissuade its people from rebelling against Vandal rule. The people of Leptis and the Vandals both paid a heavy price for this in AD 523 when a group of Berber raiders sacked the city.

Belisarius recaptured Leptis Magna in the name of Rome ten years later, and in 533/4 it was re-incorporated into the empire. Leptis became a provincial capital of the Eastern Empire, but never recovered from the destruction wreaked upon it by the Berbers. In 544, under the prefecture of Sergius, the city came under intensified attack of Berber tribes, and after some successes, Sergius was reduced to retreating into the city, with the Leuathae tribal confederation camped outside the gate demanding payments. Sergius admitted eighty deputies into the city to present their demands, but when Sergius moved to leave the conference he was detained by the robe by one deputy and crowded by others. This provoked an officer of the prefect's guard to kill the deputy laying hands on the prefect, which resulted in a general massacre. The Berbers reacted with an all-out attack and Sergius was eventually forced to abandon Leptis and retreat to Carthage.

By the 6th century, the city was fully Christianised. During the decade 565-578 AD Christian missionaries from Leptis Magna even began to move once more among the Berber tribes as far south as the Fezzan in the Libyan desert and converted the Garamantes. Numerous new churches were built in the 6th century, but the city continued to decline, and by the time of the Arab conquest c. 647 the city was mostly abandoned except for a Byzantine garrison force and a population of less than 1,000 inhabitants. Under Arab domination Leptis disappeared: by the 10th century the city was forgotten and fully covered by sand.

Excavation and preservation
Today, the site of Leptis Magna is the site of some of the most impressive ruins of the Roman period.

Part of an ancient temple was brought from Leptis Magna to the British Museum in 1816 and installed at the Fort Belvedere royal residence in England in 1826. It now lies in part of Windsor Great Park. The ruins are located between the south shore of Virginia Water and Blacknest Road close to the junction with the A30 London Road and Wentworth Drive. When Italians conquered Italian Libya in the early 20th century, they dedicated huge efforts to the rediscovery of Leptis Magna. In the early 1930s Italian archeological research was able to show again the buried remains of nearly all the city.

2005 discoveries
In June 2005, it was revealed that archaeologists from the University of Hamburg had been working along the coast of Libya when they uncovered a 30 ft length of five colourful mosaics created during the 1st or 2nd century. The mosaics show with exceptional clarity depictions of a warrior in combat with a deer, four young men wrestling a wild bull to the ground, and a gladiator resting in a state of fatigue and staring at his slain opponent. The mosaics decorated the walls of a cold plunge pool in a bath house within a Roman villa at Wadi Lebda in Leptis Magna. The gladiator mosaic is noted by scholars as one of the finest examples of representational mosaic art ever seen&mdash;a "masterpiece comparable in quality with the Alexander Mosaic in Pompeii." The mosaics were originally discovered in the year 2000 but were kept secret in order to avoid looting. They are currently on display in the Leptis Magna Museum.

In the 2011 Revolution
There were reports that Leptis Magna was used as a cover for tanks and military vehicles by pro-Gaddafi forces during the 2011 Libyan civil war. When asked about the possibility of conducting an air-strike on the historic site, NATO refused to rule out the possibility of such an action saying that it had not been able to confirm the rebels' report that weapons were being hidden at the location.