History of Libya well as by the Carthaginians from the West. In 525 BCE the Persian army of Cambyses II overran Cyrenaica, which for the next two centuries remained under Persian or Egyptian rule. Alexander was greeted by the Greeks when he entered Cyrenaica in 331 BCE, and Eastern Libya again fell under the control of the Greeks, this time as part of the Ptolemaic Kingdom. Later, a federation of the Pentapolis was formed that was customarily ruled by a king drawn from the Ptolemaic royal house. After the fall of Carthage the Romans did not occupy immediately Tripolitania (the region around Tripoli),
Names of the Greeks against the Ottomans. General Makrygiannis recalled a friend asking him: "What say you, is the Roman State far away from coming? Are we to sleep with the Turks and awaken with the Romans?" "Greek" (Γραικός) was the least popular of the three terms, but received disproportionately larger attention by scholars compared to its popular use. Adamantios Korais, a renowned Greek classicist, justified his preference in "A Dialogue between Two Greeks": "Our ancestors used to call themselves Greeks but adopted afterwards the name Hellenes by a Greek who called himself Hellen. One of the above two, therefore, is our true name.