According to Strabo, the Cibyratae (Ancient Greek: Κιβυρᾶται) were said to be descendants of Lydians who migrated and occupied the Cibyratis region and subdued the neighbouring Pisidians.

The city grew to be powerful in the second century BC, Ancient sources and other written documents indicate that Kibyra was famous for its blacksmithing, leather processing and horse breeding.

At this time it joined with three neighbouring Lycian towns, Bubon, Balbura, and Oenoanda, to form a confederation called the Tetrapolis.

[4] In 133 BC, the last Attalid king, Attalus III left his kingdom to the Roman Republic, which reconstituted it as the province of Asia.

[5] In 83 BC, during the First Mithridatic War, the Roman general Lucius Licinius Murena deposed the last tyrant of Cibyra, Moagetes II, who was the son of one Pancrates,[6][2] and dissolved the Tetrapolis.

Writing at the beginning of the 1st century AD, Strabo says that the Cibyratae spoke four languages: Pisidian, Solymian, Greek, and Lydian.

[8] Cibyra was heavily damaged by an earthquake in 23 AD in the time of Tiberius, who recommended a Senatus Consultum be enacted relieving it from payment of taxes (tributum) for three years.

[9] In the passage discussing these events, Tacitus calls it the civitas Cibyratica apud Asiam (Cibyratic community in Asia).

Subsequent Roman emperors assisted in reconstruction of the city, particularly Claudius after whom the grateful citizens added Caesarea to its name as indicated by an inscription referring to "The Council and People of the Caesarean Cibyrites" (Καισαρεων Κιβυρατων ἡ βουλη και ὁ δημος) and by the legend "Caesareans" (Καισαρεων), which appears on some of the coins of Cibyra.

The Odeon or music theatre is on the densely occupied southwest corner of the hill and had an orchestra with a Medusa mosaic floor, unlike any other in the world.

[13] From text written on the mosaic floors in front of the odeon, the building was first built in the second half of 2nd c. AD for the city council assembly (Bouleuterion) but shortly afterwards, a stage (skena) was added to the building to make it into a theatre and a court room for the law centre of Asia Minor in the Imperial Roman Period, where important trials were held.

The orchestra floor was 9.80 X 5.80 m and was covered with very finely cut white, red, purple and gray marble slabs in opus sectile.

The proskena facade facing the audience was made of thin coloured marble plates decorated with motifs on the doors and columns.

[2] The inscriptions from the site are collected in IK Kibyra, volume 60 of the Inschriften Griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien [de] series.