Leptis Magna Ruins

The city of Leptis Magna was, with Sabratha and Oea (now Tripoli), one of the three towns that made up Tripolitania in what is now Libya. Leptis Magna, a semi-autonomous city, had dominion over Sabratha and Oea but paid a city-tax to Carthage, the principal Phoenician city in North Africa. After Carthage was destroyed by Rome in the Third Punic War (146 BC), Leptis Magna came under Roman protection as part of Numidia. In 46 BC, Julius Caesar incorporated the triple cities into Africa Nova, and then Augustus made them part of the Province of Greater Africa in 23 BC. From this point, the city flourished even more than it had under Carthage, and, by the reign of Septimius Severus (r. 193-211 AD), who had been born in Leptis Magna, it became one

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yria. By the time he became emperor, he was a thorough Roman, but his early life and his first successes had all occurred in Africa, and he remained loyal to Leptis Magna (Manton 51-55). Following a trip to Leptis Magna in 202-203, Septimius began to improve the city. He began with the creation of an improved water supply employing dams, an artificial lake, and an underground conduit system. This was followed by the creation of a new harbor which was "in concept very modern" but proved impractical in the long run because the harbor silted up so fast that it had to be abandoned (Manton 71). But this harbor did prove to be the first action in his transformation of the city with works of architecture that were among the very best in North Africa. These buildings were also "more complete as a group than any contemporary monuments in Rome [and] it is as a group that they should be discussed because that was the way they were conceived" (Sear 197). The buildings have both a structural and stylistic integrity that assures the viewer that a single architect was responsible for the planning--though the architect's name has not survived. A number of art historians have worked out the fact that this architect was undoubtedly trained
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Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)