Ancient Libya valley, Cowper says, "There had been originally no less than eighteen or twenty megalithic trilithons, in a line, each with its massive altar placed before it." In ancient times, the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, the Persian Achaemenid Empire ("see Libya (satrapy)"), the armies of Alexander the Great and his Ptolemaic successors from Egypt, then Romans, Vandals, and local representatives of the Byzantine Empire ruled all or parts of Libya. The territory of modern Libya had separate histories until Roman times, as Tripoli and Cyrenaica. Cyrenaica, by contrast, was Greek before it was Roman. It was also known as Pentapolis, the "five
Theatre of ancient Rome to be performed on the Roman stage. The early drama that emerged was very similar to the drama in Greece. This was due to extensive contact between the Romans and the Greeks, which allowed the Romans to develop an interest in a new form of expression. Following the conclusion of the Third Macedonian War in 168 B.C.E., the Romans gained even more access to Greek culture, specifically in the arts, allowing for the Romans to further develop a basis for drama in their own society. The development that occurred was first initiated by playwrights that were Greeks or half-Greeks living