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During the lifetime of Battus, the founder of the colony, who
reigned forty years, and during that of his son Arcesilaus, who
reigned sixteen, the Cyrenaeans continued at the same level, neither
more nor fewer in number than they were at the first. But in the reign
of the third king, Battus, surnamed the Happy, the advice of the
Pythoness brought Greeks from every quarter into Libya, to join the
settlement. The Cyrenaeans had offered to all comers a share in their
lands; and the oracle had spoken as follows:
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He that is backward to share in the pleasant Libyan acres,
Sooner or later, I warn him, will feel regret at his folly.
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Thus a great multitude were collected together to Cyrene, and the
Libyans of the neighbourhood found themselves stripped of large
portions of their lands. So they, and their king Adicran, being
robbed and insulted by the Cyrenaeans, sent messengers to Egypt, and
put themselves under the rule of Apries, the Egyptian monarch; who,
upon this, levied a vast army of Egyptians, and sent them against
Cyrene. The inhabitants of that place left their walls and marched
out in force to the district of Irasa, where, near the spring called
Theste, they engaged the Egyptian host, and defeated it. The
Egyptians, who had never before made trial of the prowess of the
Greeks, and so thought but meanly of them, were routed with such
slaughter that but a very few of them ever got back home. For this
reason, the subjects of Apries, who laid the blame of the defeat on
him, revolted from his authority.
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