Leptis Magna (Arabic: لَبْدَة Labdah) also known as Lectis Magna (or Lepcis Magna as it is sometimes spelled), also called Lpqy, Neapolis, Lebida or Lebda to modern-day residents of Libya, was a prominent city of the Roman Empire. Its ruins are located in Khoms, Libya, 130 km (81 mi) east of Tripoli, on the coast where the Wadi Lebda meets the sea. The site is one of the most spectacular and unspoiled Roman ruins in the Mediterranean.
The city appears to have been founded by a group of local Berbers and Phoenicians sometime around 1000 BC, who gave it the Lybico-Berber name Lpqy. The town did not achieve prominence until Carthage became a major power in the Mediterranean Sea in the 4th century BC. It nominally remained part of Carthage's dominions until the end of the Third Punic War in 146 BC and then became part of the Roman Republic, although from about 111 BC onward, it was for all intents and purposes an independent city.
Leptis Magna remained as such until the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius, when the city and the surrounding area were formally
incorporated into the empire as part of the province of Africa. It soon became one of the leading cities of Roman Africa and a major trading post.
Leptis achieved its greatest prominence beginning in 193, when a Berber native son, Lucius Septimius Severus, became emperor. He favored his hometown above all other
provincial cities, and the buildings and wealth he lavished on it made Leptis Magna the third-most important city in Africa, rivaling Carthage and Alexandria. In 205, he and the imperial family
visited the city and received great honors.
Among the changes that Severus introduced were to create a magnificent new forum and to rebuild the docks. The natural harbour had a tendency to silt up, but the Severan
changes made this worse, and the eastern wharves are extremely well preserved, since they were hardly used.
Leptis over-extended itself at this period. During the Crisis of the Third Century, when trade declined precipitously, Leptis Magna's importance also fell into a
decline, and by the middle of the fourth century, large parts of the city had been abandoned. Ammianus Marcellinus recounts that the crisis was worsened by a corrupt Roman governor named Romanus
during a major tribal raid who demanded bribes to protect the city. The ruined city could not pay these and complained to the emperor Valentianian. Romanus then bribed people at court and arranged
for the Leptan envoys to be punished "for bringing false accusations". It enjoyed a minor renaissance beginning in the reign of the emperor Theodosius I.
In 439, Leptis Magna and the rest of the cities of Tripolitania fell under the control of the Vandals when their king, Gaiseric, captured Carthage from the Romans and
made it his capital. Unfortunately for the future of Leptis Magna, Gaiseric ordered the city's walls demolished so as to dissuade its people from rebelling against Vandal rule. The people of Leptis
and the Vandals both paid a heavy price for this in 523 when a group of Berber raiders sacked the city.
Belisarius recaptured Leptis Magna in the name of Rome ten years later, and in 534, he destroyed the kingdom of the Vandals. Leptis became a provincial capital of the
Eastern Roman Empire (see Byzantine Empire) but never recovered from the destruction wreaked upon it by the Berbers. It was the site of a massacre of Berber chiefs of the Leuathae tribal
confederation by the Roman authorities in 543. By the time of the Arab conquest of Tripolitania in the 650s, the city was abandoned except for a Byzantine garnison force.