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396
PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY.
[Book V.
the Sun[1] there, and five cities in especial, those of Bere- nice[2], Arsinoë[3], Ptolemais[4], Apollonia[5], and Cyrene[6], itself, Berenice is situate upon the outer promontory that bounds the Syrtis ; it was formerly called the city of the Hesperides (previously mentioned[7]), according to the fables of the
- ↑ The same that has been abeady mentioned in B. ii, c. 106. It is mentioned by Herodotus and Pomponius Mela.
- ↑ Previously called Hesperis or Hesperides. It was the most westerly city of Cyrenaica, and stood just beyond the eastern extremity of the Greater Syrtis, on a promontory called Pseudopenias, and near the river Lethon. Its historical unportance only dates from the times of the Ptolemies, when it was named Berenice, after the wife of Ptolemy III. or Euergetes. Havmg been greatly reduced, it was fortified anew by the Emperor Justmian. Its ruins are to be seen at the modern Ben Grhazi.
- ↑ So called from Arsinoe, the sister of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Its earlier name was Tauchefra or Teuchefra, which name, according to Marcus, it still retains.
- ↑ Its ruins may still be seen at Tolmeita or Tolometa. It was situate on the N.W. coast of Cyrenaica, and originally bore the name of Barca. From which of the Ptolemies it took its name is not known. Its splendid ruins are not less than four miles m circumference.
- ↑ Its ruins are still to be seen, bespeaking its former splendour, at the modern Marsa Sousah. It was originally only the port of Cyrene, but under the Ptolemies it flourished to such an extent as to eclipse that city. It is pretty certain that it was the Sozusa of the later Greek writers. Eratosthenes was a native of this place.
- ↑ The chief city of Cyrenaica, and the most important Hellenic colony in Africa, the early settlers having extensively intermarried with wives of Libyan parentage. In its most prosperous times it maintained an extensive commerce with Greece and Egypt, especially in silpliium or assafœtida, the plantations of which, as mentioned in the present chapter, extended for miles in its vicinity. Great quantities of this plant were also exported to Capua in Southern Italy, where it was extensively employed in the manufacture of perfumes. The scene of the 'Rudens,' the most picturesque (if we may use the term) of the plays of Plautus, is laid in the vicinity of Cyrene, and frequent reference is made in it to the extensive cultivation of silphium; a head of which plant also appears on the coins of the place. The philosophers Aristippus and Carneades were born here, as also the poet Calhmachus. Its ruins, at the modem Ghrennah, are very extensive, and are indicative of its former splendour.
- ↑ In C. 1 of the present Book. It was only the poetical fancy of the Greeks that found the fabled gardens of the Hesperides in the fertile regions of Cyrenaica. Scylax distinctly mentions the gardens and the lake of the Hesperides in this vicinity, where we also find a people called Hesperidæ, or, as Herodotus names them, Euesperidæ. It was probably in consequence of this similarity of name, in a great degree, that the gardens of the Hesperides were assigned to this locality.
