MERGE TO GYRENE, 565 sovereignty of at least a part of the country. Magas, the brother of Ptolemy Lagus, reigned in Cyrene for fifty years ; and it continued to be a part of the empire of the Ptolemies, some of whom resided there at different periods, till it was made over by his father to Apion, an illegitimate son of Ptolemy Physcon, who left it in his will to the Romans. The senate accepted the bequest, but allowed the several cities to be governed by their own laws ; and the country was in consequence a prey to civil discord, and exposed to the tyranny and violence of many rival pretenders to supremacy. Lucullus in some measure restored tranquillity, when he visited it during the first Mithridatic war; but the evil was never finally removed till the whole of the Cyrenaica was reduced to the form of a Roman province.

This event happened about twenty years after the death of Apion, and seventy-six before the birth of Christ : we find the country afterwards, in the time of Strabo, united with Crete in one government.

The most flourishing period of Cyrene was probably that of the Ptolemaic dynasty, and of the two or three centuries which preceded it ; an epoch when Grecian art was in the highest perfection, and literature in great estimation.

At the time when the city, on account of an insurrection, was destroyed by the Roman people (who afterwards, however, rebuilt it,) it is probable that the temples were spared ; for the architectural remains of those which we have described are decidedly Greek of an early style ; and the same may be observed with respect to many of the tombs, although in these we may find examples of architecture in the style of many different periods.