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),
Greeks in Italy part of the Italian peninsula. The Romans called the area of Sicily and the foot of the boot of Italy "Magna Graecia" (Latin, "Greater Greece"), since it was so densely inhabited by Greeks. The ancient geographers differed on whether the term included Sicily or merely Apulia and Calabria — Strabo being the most prominent advocate of the wider definitions. During the Early Middle Ages, new waves of Greeks came to Magna Graecia from Greece and Asia Minor, as Southern Italy remained governed by the Eastern Roman Empire. Although most of the Greek inhabitants of Southern Italy became de-hellenized and no