Oea

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For the town of ancient Attica, see Oea (Attica). For the town of ancient Thera (Santorini), see Oea (Thera).
The Arch of Marcus Aurelius in Oea

Oea (

Africa Nova province, Oea and surrounding Tripolitania were prosperous. It reached its height in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, when the city experienced a golden age under the Severan dynasty in nearby Leptis Magna.[3] The city was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate with the spread of Islam in the 7th century
and came to be known as Tripoli during the 9th century.

History

Antiquity

The city was founded in the 7th century BC by the

Carthaginians later wrested it again from the Greeks.[citation needed
]

By the later half of the 2nd century BC, Oea was conquered by the

Africa, and gave it the name of Regio Syrtica. Around the beginning of the 3rd century AD, it became known as the Regio Tripolitana, meaning "region of the three cities" (namely Oea (modern Tripoli of Libya), Sabratha and Leptis Magna). It was probably raised to the rank of a separate province by Septimius Severus
, who was a native of Leptis Magna.

In spite of centuries of Roman habitation, the only visible Roman remains, apart from scattered columns and capitals (usually integrated in later buildings), is the Arch of Marcus Aurelius from the 2nd century AD.[7] There are also remains of a little temple called Genius Coloniae, conserved in Tripoli Museum.

The principal surviving monument (of Oea) is an elaborately ornamental quadrifrons archway dedicated to M. Aurelius and L. Verus in A.D. 163, the central stone dome of which was carried on flat slabs laid across the angles and was concealed externally within the masonry of an attic, now destroyed. Early drawings show this attic in turn supporting a circular pavilion, but this seems to have been a later Islamic addition. The arch stood at the intersection of the two main streets of the town and the adjoining streets and alleyways of the post-Classical town incorporate many elements of an orthogonal street plan. Near the arch are the remains of a temple dedicated to the Genius Colonine (A.D. 183–85), and the forum probably lay nearby. There was a monumental bath on or near the site of the present castle. The city walls, demolished in 1913, incorporated long stretches of the late antique defenses.Richard Stillwell. Perseus

The fact that Tripoli has been continuously inhabited, unlike Sabratha and Leptis Magna, has meant that the inhabitants have either quarried material from older buildings (destroying them in the process), or built on top of them, burying them beneath the streets, where they remain largely unexcavated.

Frontal section of the Temple "Genius Coloniae"

Most of the Oea inhabitants continued to use the

centenaria
farms along the southern edge of the Oea territory.

The names of three bishops of Oea are recorded in extant documents. At the

meeting at Carthage in 484 and then exiled. Victor Vitensis says Cresconius was already bishop of Oea under King Genseric (428–467). He is mentioned in the Roman Martyrology under 28 November along with other victims of persecution by the Vandals.[8][9][10][11][12]

Thomas C. Oden says that a bishop of Oea, whom he does not name, was at the Council of Ephesus of 431.[13]

Middle Ages

The diocese was mentioned in an early 8th-century

Notitia Episcopatuum of Alexandria and in that of Byzantine Emperor Leo VI the Wise at the end of the 9th century,[14] No longer a residential bishopric, Oea is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.[15]

There is evidence that the Tripolitania region was in relative economic decline during the 5th and 6th centuries, in part due to the political unrest spreading across the Mediterranean world in the wake of the collapse of the

Gefara (where a Christian community was ruled by a "iudex").[17]

According to

Alexandria, in November 643. Retaken by the Byzantine army a few years later, Oea was finally conquered around 680. Even if partially destroyed, the city did not disappear under the sands in the next two centuries like Sabratha and Leptis Magna, but grew to be the capital of Tripolitania
. In the 9th century the name "Oea" was replaced by the present name "Tripoli".

Modernity

Immediately after the Italian conquest, the Italian administration carried out (mainly from 1919) conservation and restoration work in the city, and the Italian architect Florestano Di Fausto rearranged the area around the Arch of Marcus Aurelius in the 1930s.

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^ Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898), Oea
  2. ^ Detailed map of Roman northwestern Africa
  3. ^ Theodore Mommsen."The Provinces of the Roman Empire". Section:Africa
  4. ISBN 978-1-13470746-1
    , p. 2
  5. ^ Ghaki (2015), p. 67.
  6. ^ Head & al. (1911).
  7. ^ Oea and the Arch of Marcus Aurelius, livius.org. Accessed 31 August 2022.
  8. ^ Stefano Antonio Morcelli, Africa christiana, Volume I, Brescia 1816, pp. 249–250
  9. ^ J. Mesnage, L'Afrique chrétienne, Paris 1912, p. 164
  10. ^ Pius Bonifacius Gams, Series episcoporum Ecclesiae Catholicae, Leipzig 1931, p. 467
  11. ISBN 978-88-209-7210-3
    ), p. 612
  12. ^ Claude Fleury, Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont, The ecclesiastical history of M. l'abbé Fleury, Volume 1 (Google eBook) (Printed by T. Wood, for James Crokatt, 1727) page 437.
  13. ^ Thomas C. Oden Apostolicity and Ethnicity in Early Libyan Christianity Bibliotheca Sacra Volume: 167: (Apr 2010).
  14. ^ Hieroclis Synecdemus et notitiae graecae episcopatuum, accedunt Nili Doxapatrii notitia patriarchatuum et locorum nomina immutata, ex recognitione Gustavi Parthey, Berlino 1866, p. 83 (nº 798).
  15. ISBN 978-88-209-9070-1
    ), p. 944
  16. ^ Antonino Di Vita: Christian churches in Tripolitania interior
  17. ^ Renato Bartoccini. "Le ricerche archeologiche in Tripolitania"

Bibliography

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