It has been already mentioned in a former chapter, that Psammetichus king of Egypt, about the middle of the seventh century b.c., first removed those prohibitions which had excluded Grecian commerce from his country: in his reign, Grecian mercenaries were first established in Egypt, and Grecian traders admitted, under certain regulations, into the Nile. The opening of this new market emboldened them to traverse the direct sea which separates Krête from Egypt—a dangerous voyage with vessels which rarely ventured to lose sight of land—and seems to have first made them acquainted with the neighbouring coast of Libya, between the Nile and the gulf called the Great Syrtis. Hence arose the foundation of the important colony called Kyrênê.

As in the case of most other Grecian colonies, so in that of Kyrênê, both the foundation and the early history are very imperfectly known. The date of the event, as far as can be made out amidst much contradiction of statement, was about 630 b.c.: Thêra was the mother-city, herself a colony from Lacedæmon; and the settlements formed in Libya became no inconsiderable ornaments to the Dorian name in Hellas.

According to the account of a lost historian, of Meneklês—political dissension among the inhabitants of Thêra led to that emigration which founded Kyrênê; and the more ample legendary details which Herodotus collected, partly from Theræan, partly from Kyrenæan informants, are not positively inconsistent with this statement, though they indicate more particularly bad seasons, distress, and over-population.