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
Greeks in Uzbekistan political reasons after the Greek Civil War. The biggest Greek community in the country is in the capital city of Tashkent where most of the Greek political refugees were relocated by the Soviet authorities. In ancient times the south of the country was part of the Hellenistic Seleucid Kingdom but the few Greek communities there have since assimilated. The most important organization representing ethnic Greeks is the Greek Cultural Association of Tashkent. The activities of this organization include Greek language instruction (19 classes with a total of 571 students, classes for adults) and the teaching of Greek dances and music.