Fourth Dimension Tours

The only traces of Phoenician Lepcis to come to light so far are a number of graves under the stage of Roman Theatre. The cemetery would have lain outside the Phoenician town, which was almost certainly situated on the rising ground between the old forum (15) and the mouth of the Wadi Lebda, an area as yet unexcavated.

The Roman city is laid out in accordance with the characteristic Roman scheme of rectangular blocks, or isulae, grouped more or less symmetrically or either side of a main axial street, or cardo. The cardo of Roman Lepcis was the so-called 'Triuphal Street', which runs inland in a south-westerly direction from the Old Forum, the original nucleus of the city.
The city's rapid growth can be measured by a series of dated monuments: the Market (21) was built in 8 B.C., the Theatre (25) in A.D. 1, the Chalcidicum (24) in A.D. 11-12, and a small arch of Augusta Salutaris, situated just north of the Severan Arch (2), between 27 and 30. the early Roman city had no stone fortifications; but a wide circuit of defensive earth-works, running along the line: wadi Rsef-Monticelli-Sidi Barcu, is perhaps to be identified with the 'walls', within which , as Tacitus tells us, the citizens trembled at the approach of the Garamantes in 69.

In the second century Lepcis expanded east and west. The Trajanic Basilica and its Forum recorded in an inscription have still to be discovered; but they perhaps lay in the largely unexcavated western district of the city which had spread along the main transverse street or decumanus as far as the West Gate (26) by the middle of the century. The Hadrianic Baths (4). Dedicated in 126-127, were built on a new axis (roughly north-south) in the angle between the southern district of the first-century city and the Wadi Lebda, which must already have been dammed to prevent flooding of the site. At the beginning of the third century the remaining reclaimed area to the north-east of the Hardianic Baths, between the city and the wadi bed, was filled by the great Severan building complex consisting of the Colonnaded Street (7), Nymphaeum (5) New Forum (8) and Basilica (9); and it was now that the Harbour (10) received its final, monumental form. By this time the Circus and Amphitheatre (not on plan) had already been built outside the city to the east of the Harbour, to which they were connected by a line of buildings along the foreshore. The extent of the Severan city on the landward side is uncertain owing to lack of excavation; but the funeral monument known as Gasr Scidadad (immediately east of Sidi Yusef) must have been outside the area of habitation, while the cross-roads marked by the Severan Arch were presumably well within it. On the west the Severan city reached at least as far as the Hunting Baths (not on plan).

Severan Lepcis was to some extent an artificial, political creation, and the fall of the Severan dynasty in 235 marks the beginning of the city's decline. The remains of the so-called Late Roman Wall, built between 250 and 350 as the city's first stone fortification, gives us an idea of the extent of lepcis at this time, through some buildings outside the wall, notably the Hunting Baths, were still in use. Temporarily arrested under Diocletian and Constantine, the decline sets in again more steeply after the Austurian raids of 363-376; and a century later the demolition of the late Roman Wall by the Vandals (c. 455) left the city wide open to the encroaching sand-dunes which had long threatened it. All that the few remaining inhabitants could do, was to keep the approach roads clear by blocking up the doors of the flanking houses and by building retaining walls. When the Byzantine occupied Lepcis in 533, they found the greater part of the city buried under the sand, and the Byzantine Walls, built by Justinian, included little more than Harbour and the Old New Forums.

The Excavations
From the Entrance: (1) to the excavations a path leads to a modern flight of steps, at the bottom of which the visitor stands on the main axial street or cardo of the ancient city. At the south-west angle of the first road junction, where the cardo crosses the city's main transverse street or decumanus maximus, stands an inscribed limestone column making the beginning of the Gebel Road.

The inscription records that the road was built in the proconsulship of L. Aelius Lamia (A.D 15-16) and ran for 44 Roman miles into the interior (in Mediterraneum). In the middle of the crossing are the remains of the SEVERAN ARCH (2). The arch (pl 2) shows signs of having been erected in haste, probably for a visit paid by the emperor Septimius Severus to his birthplace in A.D. 203. it is of four sided type, with two passage-ways intersecting at right angels; but since it had a raised floor, wheeled traffic cannot have passed through it. The limestone core of the arch was originally covered by marble paneling and relief decoration. On either side of each arched entrance (pl. a2) stood a fluted Corinthian column raised on an engaged pedestal base and carrying a small half-pediment on its projecting entablature of the arch, which corresponded in height with the half-pediments, rested on four double-sided Corinthian pilasters, on at the outer angle of each pier. Above the main cornice came a low attic storey. The crossing was covered by a shallow concrete dome.

The figured and ornamental relief sculptures which originally adorned the arch have recently been removed to Tripoli, where they are now to be seen in the Castle museum.
The figured reliefs fall into two main sets. The first consists of four large rectangular panels which come from the attic storey and represent: (i) and (iii) triumphal processions (pl.3), (iii) a scene of sacrifice, (iv) Septimius Severus clasping the hand of his elder son, Caracalla, in the presence of his younger son, Geta a sscene intended to symbolize the unity of the imperial family.

The second set consists of eight smaller vertical panels, two of which were set facing each other on the internal faces of each entrance arch. The subjects represented are mostly conventional groups of deities; but a badly burned and broken panel shows Roman soldiers besieging an Oriental city. Of the other figured reliefs, the captive barbarians and trophies decorated the outer faces of the piers; the naked winged Victoories holding crowns and palm branches (pl. 4) come from the spandrels of the arches; and the spread eagles standing on globes formed angle-brackets in the interior of the arch, under the dome. The large pilaster panels decorated with vine scrolls populated by Cupids and birds stood at the four outer corners of the arch; some are unfinished.