City
Leptis Magna Colonia
Lebda · لبدة
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Leptis Magna bore the epithet 'the great' to set it apart from a smaller Leptis, and its ruins lie at Lebda in Libya. Founded by Phoenicians, the town grew rich on trade reaching deep into Africa, became a Roman colony under Trajan and flourished as the birthplace of the emperor Septimius Severus, who gave it a magnificent forum, basilica and colonnaded street. On the map, the copyist was determined to fit the thirty miles to the next station before the river Cinyps, so he wrote twenty on the road line and squeezed a further ten above it.