number into Crete, whose inhabitants were of kin to them, to inquire if any one there had ever heard of Libya. One Corobius undertook to be their guide. With him they sailed to the island of Platea, in the Gulf of Bomba and (after taking possession of it) returned home with the news. Thereupon, Battus, "alike distinguished by nobility of birth and genius," was despatched, with two fifty-oar galleys, as king, to the new colony.

The situation thus chosen was an unfavourable one, for the island was small and barren. After suffering great privations, its inhabitants left it for the mainland, and at length, under conduct of the Galigammæ, one of the Libyan tribes, (who were tired of the new comers, and in return had proved themselves troublesome neighbours,) they settled around the fountain of Cyre, which issues from a cave in the side of a hill about twelve miles from the sea-shore; and returned thanks to the god under whose auspices they had found at length a new home in the midst of a fertile country, "under an open heaven."

Cyre was a daughter of the king of the Lapithæ, and displayed her courage in combats with the wild beasts, which attacked her father's herds. One day being seen by Apollo, when, in the fastnesses of Pelion, she wrestled with a lion, he became enamoured of her. Counselled by Chiron, he carried her off in a golden

chariot into Libya. They were there kindly received by Venus, their nuptials were celebrated, and the god gave her the country as a kingdom. Of the other fables which connect the origin of Cyrene with the gods of Greece; of the Grecian Hercules, who wrestled and overthrew Antæus, the son of the Earth (the native Libyans); of the Garden of the Hesperides, which bloomed with golden apples, inaccessible on the western shore,—I need say nothing. The hidden meaning of the myths, with which a patriotic religion was not long in enrolling the obscure origin of a Grecian colony, perpetuates the story of its early struggles, throwing a poetic gauze over facts too humbling for its full-grown pride.

The new city was built on the table-land above the hill, from whose side the fountain issues. The lofty walls which inclosed it, and the temples and palaces which adorned it, arose a landmark for the mariner. Seven descendants of its founder reigned in it successively until about 450 B.C., probably invested with a sort of patriarchal authority, such as the early kings of Athens exercised. This was followed by a hundred and thirty years of liberty or licence, succeeded by a strict monarchical government under the Egyptian Ptolemys, the last of whose kings bequeathed his country to the Roman Senate.

The history, as it has come down to us, begins with

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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

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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