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
Names of the Greeks used by the Romans. Some toponyms, especially an ancient city "Hellas" in southern Thessaly, and the Greek tradition seem to indicate that the name "Hellenes" was Pre-Dorian itself and that the homeland of the "Graikoi", who were later called "Hellenes", was in central Greece. The Greek tradition mentions an earlier deluge of Ogyges in the region of Boeotia which was occupied by the Minyans a group of autochthonous or Proto-Greek speaking people. The region was called Graïke in ancient times probably after the old city of Graea (Γραῖα "Graîa", from Proto-Greek "grau-j-", "old lady") on the coast. Homer refers to