Eumelos of Cyrene was named after the town, a former colony settled by the Greeks of Thera, where he toiled as an historian. Cyrene was situated in what is now Cyrenaica near today’s village of Shahat in Libya. Eumelos originally came from Thera and was contemporary with Plato. This seldom quoted writer wrote an extensive History of Libya of which a fragment was translated into Italian by Giuseppe Perricciuoli Borzesi^[589].

Anton Mifsud and his collaborators highlighted^[209] Eumelos’ references to Atlantis, which place it on an island located between Sicily and Libya and where it subsequently submerged. Eumelos also noted that Atlantis was known as Decapolis, a possible reference to the ten (city-) states of Atlantis. Understandably, this has been claimed as clear evidence for identifying the present day Maltese Islands as remnants of Plato’s lost civilisation.