Cyrene

Cyrene was a Greek colony near modern Shahhat in northeastern Libya, founded about 631 BCE under Battus I by settlers from Thera. In the 4th century BCE Aristippus, a follower of Socrates, founded the Cyrenaic school of philosophy there. The city later passed to the Ptolemies and in 96 BCE to Rome, and it was largely destroyed in 115 CE during the Diaspora Revolt. According to the Gospels, Simon of Cyrene carried Jesus' cross, and Coptic tradition holds that Mark the Evangelist came from Cyrene and was its first bishop. Earthquakes in 262 and 365 ruined the city, which became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982.