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CYRENE

(Gk. Kyrḗnē)

The capital of the North African Roman province of Cyrenaica (modern Libya), located ca. 8 km. (5 mi.) inland. Cyrene was, along with Berenice, Arsinoë, Ptolemais, and Apollonia, part of the region known as the Pentapolis (Pliny Nat. hist. 5.31). It had been settled by Greeks in the 7th century b.c. (Herodotus Hist. 4.145-59). During most of the Hellenistic period this region was under Ptolemaic sway, but it came under Roman hegemony in 96 b.c. During the first half of the 1st century b.c., Libya and Crete were joined together to form the Roman senatorial province of Cyrenaica.

Even though the city’s design stems from the Hellenistic period, most of the extant archaeological structures come from the Roman period and include a sanctuary of Demeter, an Augusteum, a temple of Zeus, an agora, the house of Jason Magnus, Trajanic baths, an amphitheater, a hippodrome, and an altar of Apollo. Cyrene also has the most elaborate and widespread necropolis of any Greek city.

The presence of a significant Jewish community in Cyrene dates from at least the early Hellenistic period (cf. Strabo, cited in Josephus Ant. 16.7.2). During the early Roman period, numerous Jews from Cyrene participated in local political and civic life and were not without significant representation in the upper class (Josephus BJ 7.11.2 [445]). During the late 1st and early 2nd century a.d. the majority of Jews in Cyrene were susceptible, for social and economic reasons, to the rhetoric of Jewish messianic leaders. These North African Jews were participants in anti-Roman sedition during the reign of Vespasian and later, with far greater consequences, during the reign of Trajan.

Bibliography. S. Applebaum, Jews and Greeks in Ancient Cyrene. SJLA 28 (Leiden, 1979); P. MacKendrick, The North African Stones Speak (Chapel Hill, 1980); R. Stillwell, “Cyrene (Shahat),” The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites (Princeton, 1976), 253-55.

Richard E. Oster, Jr.

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

CYRENE

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)