The Libyans in the immediate neighborhood of Kyrênê were materially changed by the establishment of that town, and constituted a large part—at first, probably, far the largest part—of its constituent population. Not possessing that fierce tenacity of habits which the Mohammedan religion has impressed upon the Arabs of the present day, they were open to the mingled influence of constraint and seduction applied by Grecian settlers; so that in the time of Herodotus, the Kabales and the Asbystæ of the interior had come to copy Kyrenæan tastes and customs.[81] The Theræan colonists, having obtained not merely the consent but even the guidance of the natives to their occupation of Kyrênê, constituted themselves like privileged Spartan citizens in the midst of Libyan Periœki.[82] They seem to have married Libyan wives, whence Herodotus describes the women of Kyrênê and Barka as following, even in his time, religious observances indigenous and not Hellenic.[83] Even the descendants of the primitive œkist Battus were semi-Libyan. For Herodotus gives us the curious information that Battus was the Libyan word for a king, deducing from it the just inference, that the name Battus was not originally personal to the œkist, but acquired in Libya first as a title,[84]—and that it afterwards passed to his descendants as a proper name. For eight generations the reigning princes were called Battus and Arkesilaus, the Libyan denomination alternating with the Greek, until the family was finally deprived of its power. Moreover, we find the chief of Barka, kinsman of Arkesilaus of Kyrênê bearing the name of Alazir; a name certainly not Hellenic, and probably Libyan.[85] We are, therefore, to conceive the first Theræan colonists as established in their lofty fortified post Kyrênê, in the centre of Libyan Periœki, till then strangers to walls, to arts, and perhaps even to cultivated land. Probably these Periœki were always subject and tributary, in a greater or less degree, though they continued for half a century to retain their own king. [81] Herodot. iv, 170. νόμους δὲ τοὺς πλείστους μιμέεσθαι ἐπιτηδεύουσι τοὺς Κυρηναίων. [82] Herodot. iv, 161. Θηραίων καὶ τῶν περιοίκων, etc. [83] Herodot. iv, 186-189. Compare, also, the story in Pindar. Pyth. ix, 109-126, about Alexidamus, the ancestor of Telesikratês the Kyrenæan; how the former won, by his swiftness in running, a Libyan maiden, daughter of Antæus of Irasa,—and Kallimachus, Hymn. Apoll. 86. [84] Herodot. iv, 155. [85] Herodot. iv, 164.