Legumes seem to have been cultivated and to have formed an essential part of the human diet during the Greek and Roman periods. This paper examines the cultivation of pulses in Cyrenaica during the Hellenistic era. It considers the regional production capacity for legumes to meet local needs and argues the involvement of different kinds of pulses in interregional commerce alongside cereals and other dry grains. This study has been implemented via investigating Hellenistic epigraphic evidence from Cyrene. It has traced the cost of pulses mentioned in inscriptions of the fourth and third/second centuries BC and compared them with that of wheat and barley. Pulses and cereal costs indicated by Diocletian's ‘Edict on Maximum Prices of AD 301’ have also been investigated to assess the general trend of their prices over time. The examination demonstrates that varieties of pulses were produced in Cyrenaica during the Hellenistic era and were likely as significant as wheat and barley. It also indicates that they were probably traded from the region alongside other dry commodities.

The new digital technologies have become an effective tool for researchers in different fields. Historians and archaeologists who are studying Greek and Roman Libya have benefited from technical developments in presenting different kinds of data, particularly relating to the epigraphy and toponymy of Libya. They have recently published several resources, and are working on more. This study presents the story of how scholars have collected a variety of Libyan heritage materials and published them online; the account makes it clear that these digital projects are the result of extensive and ongoing collaboration between researchers from different countries, including Libya. They have worked together, and are still working to produce valuable online corpora of inscriptions alongside the Heritage Gazetteer of Libya which records names used at different times, and in a variety of languages, of heritage sites. We also discuss plans for further improving the accessibility of these materials, and encouraging their wider use.