The town of Tripoly has been usually considered to occupy the site of the ancient Oea; one of the cities which, with Sabrata and Leptis Magna, the Tripoli Vecchia and Lebida of modern times, composed the three principal towns of a district which took from them the appellation of Tripolis. At what precise period this tract of country assumed the title of Tripolis does not appear to be clearly ascertained; but we may probably conclude that it acquired it in the reign, either of Titus, or of his successor Domitian; soon after the building of Sabrata and Oea, which may be supposed to have taken place before the middle of the first century[11]. It seems to be still more uncertain when the name of the _district_ was bestowed upon the _cities_ of Tripoly; for although Tripoli Vecchia (which we have already called Sabrata) has been said to be the first which assumed it, there does not appear to be any other proof in favour of this supposition, (at least we are not ourselves acquainted with it,) than that which may be inferred from the epithet _vecchia_, by which this town has been for centuries distinguished. Both cities appear to have flourished together under the Romans; and were in all probability destroyed at the same time, in the Saracen invasion of the country. As Sabrata, however, continued to remain in ruins, while a new town sprung up on the site of the ancient Oea, the name of Tripoly may have, perhaps, been first assumed by the latter; while Sabrata, from the circumstance of its being in ruins, was distinguished by the epithet which it retains. We are not aware of any proof that either Sabrata or Oea had changed their names before their destruction by the Saracens; and as no town appears to have been erected on the ruins of the former, there was no necessity for distinguishing it by another. When a new town arose on the ruins of Oea, it is probable that the appellation by which it is at present known to the Moors, and which is merely a corruption of the Roman term for the district[12], was the first name which either town assumed after the loss of those which formerly distinguished them. Tráblis would have been known to the nations of Europe as the same name with that of Tripolis; and they would naturally have written the term like that of the district, whenever there might have been occasion to mention it. Supposing this to be the case, we may fairly assume, that the name of Tripolis was never given by the ancients at all to either of the cities in question; and that it is only, in fact, since the Mahometan conquest that the name of the district has been applied to them.