Roman Milestones in Cyrenaica

Abstract

The ancient coast road of Libya which runs close to the shore from Berenice (Benghasi) to Teuchira (Tocra) and Ptolemais (Tolmeita) later swings inland to reach Cyrene, and climbs to the second plateau of the Gebel Akhdar (some 500 metres above sea-level), which it reaches in the vicinity of Messa. From Messa eastwards the road can be traced without difficulty, in the form of a shallow cutting in the rock (probably of Greek origin), to Zavia Beda where the remains of the Roman town of Balagrae are still visible. On the Peutinger Map Balagrae is marked as 12 Roman miles from Cyrene, and this figure is accurate if one follows the course of the old road from Beda to the south gate of Cyrene. For its last three kilometres before reaching Cyrene, the ancient road is very clearly visible as a sunk track cut in the rock, with numerous wheel-ruts, and with ancient tombs flanking it. It is far from straight and makes several sharp bends, but there is no indication that Roman engineers attempted to eliminate these eccentricities when the road became one of the highways of the Empire.Roman milestones previously found in the area of Cyrene have all come from the Cyrene—Apollonia road, and the Trajanic column which marked the first mile on that route was found in 1915 by Italian military engineers in the course of bringing back into use the long-abandoned Roman road, which descends the upper escarpment of the Gebel. The column is now in the Museum at Cyrene, but its exact original site can be identified from photographs taken at the time of its discovery: it stood a little east of the large circular tomb immediately below the gallery which now houses the greater part of the ancient sculpture from the Italian excavations.