Whatever may be the earliest authority for this supposition, it appears to be evidently founded on an imperfect knowledge of the place; for if there were even no reason for supposing Tripoly to be Oea, we must still have allowed it Roman origin; or at least we must have admitted it to have been in existence at the time when the Romans held the country. The Roman arch, which has been given in the work of Captain Lyon, is sufficient to establish this circumstance; and the inscription which it bears, also given in the same publication, and mentioned in the Memoirs of Consul Tully[15], refers this edifice to the time of Marcus Aurelius. In stating that Tripoly was built by the Africans, _after the ruin of Tripoli Vecchia_, we might have imagined that Leo only meant to allude to its re-construction under the Mahometans; but from the circumstance of his having just before mentioned Tripoli Vecchia, as a city which was built by the Romans, it seems to be probable that, had he been aware of them, he would equally have noticed the pretensions of modern Tripoly to a higher antiquity than he has assigned to it. Tripoli Vecchia was destroyed, under the caliphate of Omar, by the Saracen invaders of the country. The city was pillaged, after a siege of six months, and its inhabitants either slain or carried prisoners to Egypt and Arabia. This is stated by Leo; and here we have a date for the destruction of the city of Sabrata, which appears to have never been rebuilt: but _how long_ after the occurrence of this event Modern Tripoly first appeared on the ruins of Oea we have not been informed by our author. And it seems to be evident that he considered the African town as the first which had been raised upon the spot. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: _Three_ sides of the town of Tripoly are said, in Tully’s Memoirs, to be washed by the sea, which is certainly not now the case.] [Footnote 2: The noted corsair Dragūt is said to have been the author of this defence, and two forts which were situated near the sea are also attributed to this person. But Leo Africanus, who flourished at the same period with Dragūt, at the beginning of the 16th century, has mentioned the walls of Tripoly as being high and handsome, though not very strong; and as the existing walls of the town, if they be really those of Dragūt, bear all the appearance of having once been very solid, we may perhaps suppose that those mentioned by Leo were standing before the present ones were constructed. The greatest length of the city, including the walls, may be said to be about 1360 yards, and its extreme breadth about a thousand yards.] [Footnote 3: The happy confusion of buildings which surmount the walls of the castle, raised at various times for the convenience and accommodation of the royal family, together with the little world which is contained within its limits, have been well, and correctly described in Tully’s Memoirs.]