Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898)

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Barca

（Βάρκη). Now Merjeh. The second city of Cyrenaica, in Northern Africa, 100 stadia from the sea. It appears to have been at first a settlement of a Libyan tribe, the Barraci, but about B.C. 560 was colonized by the Greek seceders from Cyrené, and became so powerful as to make the western part of Cyrenaica virtually independent of the mother city. In B.C. 510 it was taken by the Persians, who removed most of its inhabitants to Bactria; and under the Ptolemies its ruin was completed by the erection of its port into a new city, which was named Ptolemaïs.