LEPTIS MAGNA,
or Lepcis Libya.
On the
coast 120 km E of Tripoli (Oea), the farthest E of the
three cities (treis poleis) that gave the region its name.
Originally a Punic settlement, established not later than
500 B.C. beside a small natural harbor at the mouth of
the wadi Lebda, the city flourished and rapidly expanded under Augustus and his successors, reaching a
peak of prosperity in the reign of Septimius Severus,
who was himself a native of Leptis. The subsequent decline, accelerated by the growing strength of the tribes
of the interior and by the Vandal conquest of ca. A.D.
455, was compounded by disastrous winter floods and
by the incursion of the mobile sand dunes which finally
covered (and in so doing preserved) the site. After
Justinian's reconquest in A.D. 533, a relatively small area
around the port was refortified. The Arab conquest of
A.D. 643 put an end to effective urban life.
The excavations of the 1920s and 1930s uncovered
large stretches of the street plan and many of the principal public monuments, but relatively little of the domestic and commercial quarters. The Punic settlement
lay on the W side of the mouth of the wadi and still
awaits systematic examination. The Roman town grew
outwards from this nucleus, its growth shaped largely by
the lines of two pre-existing roads: the road that linked
the harbor with the rich olive-growing country in the
hills to the S, curving gently up the low watershed to
the N and W of the wadi, and the main coastal road,
which at this point passed some 800 m to the S of the
early settlement.
The initial development took the form of a series of
orthogonally gridded quarters laid out in rapid succession
along the first of these roads (the so-called Via Trionfale) which thus became the main axial street of the
imperial town: the first, including the Forum Vetus,
immediately adjoining the Punic settlement (ca. 30-20
B.C.?); next, an extension S to the market (last decade
of the 1st c. B.C.); and subsequently (late Augustan-Tiberian), a further extension S towards, and orthogonal
to, the coast road, which thus became the main transverse street (the “Decumanus”) of the later imperial
town. The area to the S of this street awaits excavation,
as does also most of the area to the E of the wadi, which
seems largely to have retained a residential, semisuburban character. The main attested urban development
in the later 1st and 2d c. lay to the W, where the formal
grid of streets extended at least as far as the Hunting
Baths.
The Forum Vetus, stripped of its Byzantine accretions, presents an unusually complete picture of an early
imperial forum complex. The 1st c. buildings were all
built of the fine local limestone in a provincial style that
incorporated many pre-Roman details. The irregular
alignment of the NE side reflects the orientation of the
pre-existing settlement. Along the NW side are three
temples: one, dedicated to Liber Pater, an early Augustan building standing on a lofty podium; next to it,
and linked with it at podium level to form a single platform, a temple of Rome and Augustus (Tiberian), the
find spot of a large group of Julio-Claudian statuary
now in the Tripoli Museum; and at the N corner, a
smaller temple of unknown dedication, dated between 5
B.C. and A.D. 2. The opposite, SE side was occupied by
the Basilica Vetus (Tiberian or Claudian), and in A.D.
53 the whole open area was paved and enclosed on three
sides by porticos. Three more temples occupied the SW
side: one to Magna Mater (A.D. 72); one of Trajanic
date, later converted into a church; and, at the W corner, a small courtyard-shrine in honor of Antoninus
Pius (A.D. 153). The curia, obliquely opposite the entrance to the basilica, was added in the early 2d c.,
during the course of which most of the earlier buildings,
both here and elsewhere in the city, were partly rebuilt
in marble.
The market, built in 9-8 B.C. on what was then the
outskirts of the growing city, was an enclosed, porticoed structure with two octagonal pavilions, one original
and one rebuilt in the early 3d c. The many surviving
fittings include the market benches and the official tables
of weights and measures. Nearby, on the site of a
Punic cemetery, is the theater (A.D. 1-2). At the head of
the magnificent limestone cavea stood a small Temple
of Ceres (A.D. 35-36) and a (later) portico. The pavement of the orchestra replaces an earlier floor of elaborately painted stucco, and the marble scaenae frons is
of Antonine date. Beyond it is a well-preserved, quadrangular porticus post scaenam enclosing a central temple
of the Di Augusti (A.D. 43). Between the theater and
the main street, much altered by later structures, lay a
large porticoed enclosure, along the frontage of which
ran a monumental chalcidicum (A.D. 11-12) containing
offices and a small Shrine of Venus Chalcidica. Two
honorary arches masked the change of alignment of the
main street, one recording the paving of the streets in
A.D. 35-36, the other a quadrifrons erected in honor of
Trajan in A.D. 110. Yet another, in honor of Vespasian
(A.D. 77-78), was demolished to make way for the Byzantine Gate.
Continuing S down the main street, one arrives at
the crossing of the Decumanus, the center of the expanded city where, shortly after 200, an ornate quadrifrons arch was erected in honor of Septimius Severus.
The sculpture from this arch is now in the Tripoli Museum. It includes four large relief panels from the attic, two portraying triumphal processions, one a sacrlficial scene, and one symbolic of the solidarity of the
imperial family. A second set of eight figured panels
adorned the inner face of the arch. The carving throughout is the work of sculptors from Asia Minor and their
local pupils.
To the W of this point recent excavations have uncovered a courtyard building with two apses, thought
to be a schola, a small late bath, and a 2d c. temple.
Beyond this the west gate of the 4th c. walls incorporates
a monumental arch (perhaps of Antoninus Pius; the
inscription is lost) and beyond this again are the remains of a fine quadrifrons arch in honor of M. Aurelius (A.D. 173).
In the opposite direction, E of the Severan Arch, one
passes through a quarter of which the blocked doorways attest a period in late antiquity when only the
main streets were kept open. Beyond it, angled in beside the wadi, lie the Hadrianic baths, a huge symmetrical building, completed in A.D. 127 on the model of the
great imperial baths of Rome and later several times
remodeled, notably under Commodus. The monumental
porticoed palaestra in front is an Antonine addition.
The accession of Septimius Severus was predictably
the signal for an outburst of building activity. In addition to the quadrifrons arch, a possible enlargement of
the circus, and the construction of new cisterns and of
an underground aqueduct from the wadi Caam, 20 km
to the E, the next three decades saw the completion of
a vast building program, comprising a new, enclosed
harbor, a colonnaded street leading up from it to a
monumental piazza beside the Hadrianic baths and, beside the street, a grandiose new forum and basilica.
Much of the land for the program was reclaimed from
the former wadi bed.
Before Severus the harbor seems to have consisted
largely of quays and warehouses alongside the sheltered
natural anchorage afforded by the wadi mouth, mainly
along the W bank. The new scheme saw the creation of
an artificial basin, some 21 ha in extent, with a narrow
entrance between two projecting, artificial moles. Along
the W mole there were warehouses (unexcavated) and
at the seaward extremity a lighthouse; along the E mole,
a signal tower, a small temple, and a row of warehouses
fronted by a portico with an upper gallery. Facing out
across the harbor, on a high, stepped podium, was a
Temple of Jupiter Dolichenus. The arrangements for
berthing the individual ships, with steps down and mooring rings, are unusually well preserved.
The colonnaded street was 366 m long, with a central
carriageway about 21 m wide. The flanking porticos were
raised on tall pedestals, with columns of green Karystos
marble, carrying arches instead of the usual architraves.
Off the NW side opened the basilica and forum, ingeniously sited so as to minimize the differences of alignment imposed by the irregularities of the site available.
The basilica itself was a grandiose rectangular hall,
measuring about 30.48 m from floor to ceiling and
flanked by lateral aisles with galleries over them; at
either end of the central nave was a large, concretevaulted apse, incorporating a pair of engaged columnar
orders, and beside each apse stood a pair of pilasters
carved with scenes from the stories of the city's patron
divinities, Herakles (the Punic Melqarth) and Dionysos
(Shadrap or Liber Pater). The forum was a huge open
space, nearly 60 m wide, enclosed on three sides by tall,
arcaded porticos, similar to those of the colonnaded
street; and on the fourth side, facing the basilica from
the head of a lofty podium and fronted by a spreading
flight of steps, was an octastyle temple in honor of the
Severan family. The columns of this, which stood on
sculptured pedestals of Pentelic marble, were of red
Assuan granite, as also were those of the basilica. A feature of both forum and basilica is the large number of
marble workers' signatures, all in Greek. In the 6th c.
the basilica was converted into a church and the forum
into a barracks.
At the head of the colonnaded street, where it met,
at a variety of angles, the Hadrianic baths and palaestra,
the main street from the theater, and a second colonnaded street running up the wadi behind the baths, the
original design envisaged a circular piazza enclosed
within a portico. This axially neutral scheme was, however, dropped in favor of the establishment of a new
dominating axis by the construction on the E side, symmetrically between the two colonnaded streets, of a
huge scenographic fountain building. Half of the central
hemicycle has fallen outwards, but the rest of it is still
standing to its full height, together with considerable
remains of the engaged marble orders that decorated it.
The Severan complex was originally planned to include
other buildings beside the colonnaded street, but though
the ground was cleared the only one to be built was a
hemicyclical exedra on the N side of the piazza. The
adjoining church dates from the 6th c., when a section
of the Byzantine city wall was built across the piazza
itself.
The many outlying buildings include, near the NE
corner of the town, a large amphitheater (A.D. 56) built
into a disused quarry and, between it and the sea, a
circus. To the W of the Old Forum are the “new excavations” (1955-60), of which the most conspicuous
monument is a late, unfinished bath of “imperial” type,
with a hexagonal caldarium. Beyond this lie the 4th c.
walls, and beyond these the Hunting Baths, a 3d c. concrete-vaulted building of which the structure, paintings,
and mosaics were found almost intact beneath the sand
dunes. To the S, up the wadi Lebda, are two large cisterns and a massive dam built to divert the flood waters
of the wadi round the city. The suburban villas include
the rich Villa del Nib (mosaics in Tripoli Museum).
The cemeteries have not been systematically explored.
The small museum is primarily a lapidary collection. All
the finer sculpture is in Tripoli.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
P. Romanelli,
Leptis Magna (1924);
“Leptis Magna,”
EAA IV (1961) 572-94; R. Bartoccini,
Le Terme di Lepcis (1929); “L'arco quadrifronte dei
Severi a Lepcis,”
Africa Italiana, 4 (1931) 32-152; “Il
Porto Romano di Leptis Magna,”
Bollettino del Centro
Studi per la Storia dell'Archiettura 13 (Suppl. to 1958)
(1960); J. B. Ward-Perkins, “Severan Art and Architecture at Leptis Magna,”
JRS 38 (1948) 59-80; idem &
J.M.C. Toynbee, “The Hunting Baths at Leptis Magna,”
Archaeologia 93 (1949) 165-95; N. Degrassi, “Il mercato
romano di Leptis Magna,”
Quaderni di Archeologia della
Libia 2 (1951) 27-70; DEL. Haynes,
An Archaeological and Historical Guide to the pre-Islamic Antiquities of Tripolitania (1955) 71-106; R. Bianchi Bandinelli, E. Vergara Caffarelli and G. Caputo,
Leptis
Magna (1964); M. F. Squarciapino,
Leptis Magna
(1966).
J. B. WARD-PERKINS
