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 after- 
wards, 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. 
