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Greek colony in Cyrenaica, a province of northeastern Libya, along the African shores of the Mediterranean (area 5).
The city of Cyrene was founded by Mynians, descendants of the Argonauts who had migrated to Lemnos and then to Sparta, and, from there, had followed Theras to the island of Thera. Obeying an oracle from the Pythoness of Delphi, they moved from Thera to Lybia under the leadership of Battus, a descendant of the Argonaut Euphemus (Herodotus, IV, 145-158).
Cyrene is the birthplace of Theodorus, the mathematician staged in the Theætetus, Sophist and Statesman (Theætetus, 143d). We don't know much about this Theodorus, except for what we can derive from Plato's above mentioned dialogues. Diogenes Lærtius (Lives, II, 103) says that Plato attended lectures by him, but this may be a late deduction from the dialogues. Cyrene was also the birthplace of another Socratic philosopher, Aristippus , whose hedonistic school took the name "Cyrenaic" as a result.