Map of the Roman Empire - Leptis Magna

Leptis Magna
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Ancient Leptis Magna Regio Syrtica or Tripolitana, Tripoli. - Leptis Magna. Greater and Lesser Syrtis. - Ancient Geography

Leptis (?ept??). Leptis Magna or Neapolis, a city on the coast of North Africa, between the Syrtes, east of Abrotonum, was a Ph�nician colony, with a flourishing commerce, though it possessed no harbour. With Abrotonum and Oea it formed the African Tripolis. It was the birthplace of the emperor Septimius Severus. - Harry Thurston Peck. Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. New York. Harper and Brothers. 1898.

Leptis Magna, (Arabic: لَبْدَة‎ [1]) also known as Lectis Magna (or Lepcis Magna as it is sometimes spelled), also called Lpqy or Neapolis, was a prominent city of the Roman Empire. Its ruins are located in Al Khums, Libya, 130 km east of Tripoli, on the coast where the Wadi Lebda meets the sea. The site is one of the most spectacular and unspoiled Roman ruins in the Mediterranean, including the Severan Basilica and the Theatre

History
The city appears to have been founded by Phoenician colonists sometime around 1100 BC, who gave it the Lybico-Berber name Lpqy.[2] The town wouldn't achieve prominence until Carthage became a major power in the Mediterranean Sea in the 4th century BC. It nominally remained part of Carthage's dominions until the end of the Third Punic War in 146 BC and then became part of the Roman Republic, although from about 200 BC onward, it was for all intents and purposes an independent city.

Market placeLeptis Magna remained as such until the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius, when the city and the surrounding area were formally incorporated into the empire as part of the province of Africa. It soon became one of the leading cities of Roman Africa and a major trading post.

Leptis achieved its greatest prominence beginning in 193, when a native son, Lucius Septimius Severus, became emperor. He favored his hometown above all other provincial cities, and the buildings and wealth he lavished on it made Leptis Magna the third-most important city in Africa, rivaling Carthage and Alexandria. In 205, he and the imperial family visited the city and received great honors.

Among the changes that Severus introduced were to create a magnificent new forum and to rebuild the docks. The natural harbour had a tendency to silt up, but the Severan changes made this worse, and the eastern wharves are extremely well preserved, since they were hardly used. - Wikipedia
 

Lepis Magna LEPTIS MAGNA
LEPTIS MAGNA (? ??pt?? �e????, ?ept?�???a, Procop. B. 5.2.21 ; also ??pt??, simply; aft. ?e?p????; Leptimagnensis Civitas, Cod. Just. 1.27. 2: Eth. and Adj. ?ept?ta???, Leptitanus: Lebda, large Ru.), the chief of the three cities which formed the African Tripolis, in the district between the Syrtes (Regio Syrtica, aft. Tripolitana), on the N. coast of Africa; the other two being Oea and Sabrata. Leptis was one of the most ancient Phoenician colonies on this coast, having been founded by the Sidonians (Sal. Jug. 19, 78); and its site was one of the most favourable that can be imagined for a city of the first class. It stood at one of those parts of the coast where the table-land of the Great Desert falls off to the sea by a succession of mountain ridges, enclosing valleys which are thus sheltered from those encroachments of sand that cover the shore where no such protection exists, while they lie open to the breezes of the Mediterranean. The country, in fact, resembles, on a small scale, the terraces of the Cyrenaic coast; and its great beauty and fertility have excited the admiration alike of ancient and modern writers. (Ammian. Marc. 28.6 ; Della Cella ; Beechy; Barth, &c.) Each of these valleys is watered by its streamlet, generally very insignificant and even intermittent, but sometimes worthy of being styled a river, as in the case of the CINYPS and of the smaller stream, further to the west, upon which Leptis stood. The excellence of the site was much enhanced by the shelter afforded by the promontory HERMAEUM (Ras-al-Ashan), W. of the city, to the roadstead in its front. The ruins of Leptis are of vast extent, of which a great portion is buried under the sand which has drifted over them from the sea. From what can be traced, however, it is clear that these remains contain the ruins of three different cities. - Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) William Smith, LLD, Ed.