Crete and Cyrenaica Crete and Cyrenaica Crete and Cyrenaica () was a senatorial province of the Roman Empire, established in 67 BCE. It comprised the island of Crete and the region of Cyrenaica in present-day Libya. Ptolemy Apion, the last king of the Hellenistic Kingdom of Cyrenaica left his kingdom to the Roman Republic when he died childless in 96 BCE. Rome readily accepted this inheritance from Ptolemy Apion but preferred to leave the administration to local rulers, rather than enforcing direct control. However, by the 70s BCE, civil uprisings by Jewish settlers began to destabilise the province and the Senate was forced
Greeks in Russia and the Soviet Union from Central Asia and Georgia. Today most Greeks in the former USSR speak Russian, with a significant number speaking their traditional Pontic Greek. Pontian is a Greek dialect that derives from the ancient Ionic Greek dialect and resembles ancient Greek more than the modern "demotic" Greek language. Until recently, the ban on teaching Greek in Soviet schools meant that Pontian was spoken only in a domestic context. Consequently, many Greeks, especially those of the younger generation, speak Russian as their first language. Linguistically, Greeks are far from being unified. In Ukraine alone, there are at least five documented Greek linguistic