432 HISTORY OF GREECE. tiades the victor of Marathon, and belonging to a family still dis- tinguished at Athens. In inviting Ophelias to undertake jointly the conquest of Carthage, the envoys proposed that he should himself hold it when conquered. Agathokles (they said) wished only to overthrow the Carthaginian dominion in Sicily, being well aware that he could not hold that island in conjunction with an African dominion. To Ophelias,^ such an invitation proved extremely seducing. He was already on the look out for aggrandizement towards the west, and had sent an exploring nautical expedition along the northern coast of Africa, even to some distance round and beyond the Strait of Gibraltar.^ Moreover, to all military adventurers, both on sea and on land, the season was one of boundless speculative promise. They had before them not only tbe prodigious career of Alexander him- self, but the successful encroachments of the great officers his successors. In the second distribution, made at Triparadeisus, of the Alexandrine empire, Antipater had assigned to Ptolemy not merely Egypt and Libya, but also an undefined amount of territory west of Libya, to be afterwards acquired ; 3 the con- quest of which was known to have been among the projects of Alexander, had he lived longer. To this conquest Ophelias was now specially called, either as the viceroy or the independ- ent equal of Ptolemy, by the invitation of Agathokles. Having learnt in the service of Alexander not to fear long marches, he 1 Diodor. xx. 40. ' From an incidental allusion in Strabo (xvu. p. 826), we learn this fact — that Ophelias had surveyed the whole coast of Northern Africa, to the straits of Gibraltar, and round the old Phenician settlements on the western coast of modern Morocco. Some eminent critics (Grosskurd among them) reject the reading in Strabo — utto tov 'O^t'/la (or 'O0£/l?ua) 7rEpi7T?iOv, which is sus- tained by a very great preponderance of MSS. But I do not feel the force of their reasons; and the reading which they would substitute has nothing to recommend it. In my judgment, Ophelias, ruling in the Kyrenaica and indulging aspirations towards conquest westward, was a man both likely to order, and competent to bring about, an examination of the North African coast. The knowledge of this fact may have induced Agathokles to apply to him. ' Arrian, De Rebus post Alex. 34, ap. Photium, Cod. 92. Alyvrrrov ficv yap Kal Ai(3vt]v, koI ti]v eneKeiva Tuvrt]^ ti/v tvo/M/v, ical o,7« Trep uv ypdc ro'jToig dopiov iTTiKTi/arjTai npbg dvofievov ijXlov, TlToAe/xaiov.
