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),
Greek colonisation of the Teians. On the eastern shore, which was known in ancient times as Colchis and in which today for the greater part is in Georgia and the autonomous region of Abkhazia, the Greeks founded the cities of Phasis and Dioscouris. The latter was called "Sebastopolis" by the Romans and Byzantines and is known today as Sukhumi—the ruins of the ancient and Byzantine foundations are now found principally below the waterline. The Greek colonies expanded as far as the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa. In North Africa, on the peninsula of Cyrenaica, colonists from Thera founded Cyrene, which evolved into