A Pentapolis, from the Greek words penta 'five' and polis 'city(-state)' is geographic and/or institutional grouping of five cities. A polis (πολις) — plural: poleis (πολεις) — is a city, or a city-state. ...

Significant historical cases

• in the biblical Holy Land, the word, occurring in Wisdom, x, 6, designates the region where stood the five cities (pente, polis) — Sodom, Gomorrha, Segor (A. V., Zoar), Adama, Seboim — which united to resist the invasion of Chodorlahomor (Gen., xiv), and of which four were shortly after utterly destroyed- see [Catholic Encyclopaedia]
• in the Roman province of Libya Superior (the western part of Cyrenaica untill Diocletian's Tetrarchy reform in 296AD), five Mediterranean coastal cities (east of it was Marmarica, which became Libya inferior): the eponymous capital Cyrene and its port Apollonia, Ptolemais (the next capital after Cyrene's destruction by an earthquake), Barca (the later Arab provincial capital Barka) and Berenica (modernBenghazi); also known as the Pentapolis inferior ('lower P.')
• the medieval Central-Italian Pentapolis on the Adriatic, atypically, actually was one duchy east of Tuscany and north of the duchy of Spoleto, including the port cities (West to East) of Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia and Ancona, formerly south of the Byzantine secular Exarchate of Ravenna, later transformed into the March of Ancona

Roman province of Cyrenaica, 120 AD Cyrenaica was a Roman province on the northern coast of Africa between Egypt and Numidia; it had been formerly Greek. ... The Tetrarchs, a porphyry sculpture sacked from a Byzantine palace in 1204, Treasury of St. ... Spoleto (Latin: Spoletium), 42°44′ N 12°44′ E, an ancient town in the Italian province of Perugia in east central Umbria, at 385 meters (1391 ft) above sea-level on a foothill of the Apennines. ... Riminis skyline. ... Pesaro (in Antiquity, Pisaurum) is a town and comune in the Italian region of the Marche, capital of the Pesaro e Urbino province, 43°55N 12°55E; on the Adriatic, at sea-level. ... Fano (estimated 2003 population 58,041) is a town and [comune]] of the province of Pesaro and Urbino in the Marche region of Italy. ... Ancona is a city and a seaport in the Marche, a region of northeastern Italy, population 100,507 (2001). ... The Exarchate of Ravenna was a center of Byzantine power in Italy, from the end of the 6th century to 751 A.D., when the last Exarch was put to death by the Emperors enemies in Italy, the Lombards. ...

Homonym

Not to be confused with a homonymous port city in Bengal ? northern Burma

See also

• Tripolis

Tripoli (population 1 million, Arabic: Ţarabulus) is the capital of Libya. ...

Sources and References

• [many occurrences in the Catholic Encyclopaedia]
• Westermann Großer Atlas zur Weltgeschichte (in German)