Citation with stable link: Philip A. Harland, 'Marmaridians / Marmarites in Libya: Emperor Claudius II on their sustained “arrogance” (late third century CE),' Ethnic Relations and Migration in the Ancient World, last modified November 13, 2026, https://philipharland.com/Blog/?p=24288.
Ancient author: Emperor Claudius II Gothicus, AÉ (1934), no. 257 = SB 6026 = Arthur Stein, “Tenagino Probus: Ein Beitrag zur Glaubwürdigkeit der Historia Augusta,” Klio 29 (1936): 237–42 = SEG IX (1938), no. 9.
Comments: The inhabitants of the region in Libya (northern Africa) between Cyrenaica and Egypt (a region sometimes designated Marmarikē in Greek or Marmarica in Latin) were known to some outsiders as either Marmaridians or Marmarites, as in this inscription. Florus, for instance, attributes an earlier defeat of the Marmaridians (Marmaridae) and Garamantians of northern Africa to P. Sulpicius Quirinius in Quirinius’ role as proconsul of Crete and Cyrenaica in the late first century BCE (Florus, Epitome of Roman History 2.31). Diodoros (link), Strabo (link), and Pseudo-Skylax (link) also briefly mention the location of the Marmaridians, but without characterizing them.
This much later inscription commissioned by the emperor Claudius II (eventually with the title Gothicus, indicating conquest of the Goths) shows that it is not only in ethnographic accounts produced by literary elites that you find characterizations of such populations. Here the emperor himself has a mason label this people as very “audacious” or “arrogant” as the emperor gloats over their apparent defeat at the hands of his general Tenagino Probus, the prefect of Egypt in the later third century CE (but also previously governor of Numidia in 268/9 CE, as in AÉ [1936], no. 58). The notoriously unreliable Historia Augusta (section 9) later confuses this prefect with the still later emperor Probus.
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Emperor Caesar Marcus Aurelius Claudius [II] Augustus reestablished Claudiopolis [i.e. Kyrene], named after himself, after suppressing the long-standing arrogance (thrasytēta) of the Marmarites (Marmaritai), while Probus, the most illustrious prefect of Egypt, led the war and the refounding.
Αὐτοκρ(άτωρ) Καῖσ(αρ) Μ(ᾶρκος) Αὐρ(ήλιος) Κλαύδιος Σεβ(αστός), | ὅπλοις ἀναστίλας τὴν πολυχρόνιον | Μαρμαριτῶν θρασύτητα, Κλαυδιόπολιν, | ἐπώνυμον ἑαυτοῦ, ἐκ νέας ἱδρύσατο, ἡγουμένου | τὸν πόλεμον καὶ κτίζοντος Πρόβου τοῦ διασημοτ(άτου) ἐπάρ(χου) Αἰγύπ(του).
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Source of translation: Harland.