564 MERGE TO GYRENE.

been spared for their adherence to the family of Battus. The cruelties of Pheretime were visited upon her as those of Herod were afterwards punished ; for we are told that she was eaten alive by worms, and died in the greatest torments.

The account which has descended to us of Cyrene and Barca, (with that of the various tribes of Northern Africa,) from the pen of the father of history, concludes with the death of Pheretime ; which is believed by Herodotus to have been a judgment of the gods for the cruelties of which she had been guilty.

From this time the Cyreneans as well as the Libyans, with whom they appear to have been intermixed, are little alluded to in history till the conquest of the Persian empire. W e are informed by Aristotle that, in his time, Cyrene was a republic ; and we may perhaps suppose that, on the extinction of the family of Battus, that form of government took place which had been recommended by Hemonax; although the Cyreneans may possibly have been tributary to, or under the protection of, Persia, xlt the period when the dispute concerning the limits of the countries took place between the people of Cyrene and Carthage, we may presume, from the account transmitted of it by Sallust, that democracy was the established form of government at Cyrene ; and Strabo has informed us, that the Cyreneans continued to be governed by their own laws, till the reduction of Egypt by the Macedonians. After the death of Alexander, Cyrene became the prey of contending adventurers, and was at length delivered into the hands of Ptolemy by Ophelias ; although that general is supposed to have obtained for himself the