96 George Dahl, 



If Pliny was rightly informed by his sources, the phrase 

 " memoria urbium " would seem to indicate that Dor had been for 

 a time almost or quite in ruins'. The testimony of the coins", 

 however, proves that Dor was certainly issuing coins from 64 A, D. 

 down to the time of Elagabalus. Either Pliny was uninformed 

 concerning the condition of Dor in his own time, or else he is 

 indulging in hyperbole or loose and inexact inference. 



Strabo' in the passage mentioned above (i.e., XVI, 3, §27) has 

 some interesting parallels to the statements of Pliny. He says: 



yu-era 8e Tr]y "Aktjv SrpaToJvos Trrpyos, 7rp6<Topf.iov i^wv. fxtra^v 8e o re 

 Kap/AT^Aos TO opos xat 7roAt;;(vtwv ovo/JLara. vrXtov 8' ovBev, 2vKa/xiVwv TrdAts, 

 BovKoAojv Kol KpoKoSetAwv TToAis KOI aAAa roiavra. elra Spvix6<; /x,€yas rt?. 



"And after Ake is Strato's Tower, which has a harbor. And 

 between these is Mount Carmel besides the names of little towns 

 (and nothing more), viz., the city Sycaminoi, the cities Boukoloi 

 and Cx'ocodeiloi, and others of the same sort. Then follows a cer- 

 tain great forest." 



It is to be noticed that Strabo here omits Dor from his enumera- 

 tion of TToXix^iwv dvofMLTa. It may be that Dor was overshadowed by 

 its greater neighbor Caesarea, Like Pliny, Strabo mentions the city 

 Sycaminon as no longer in existence. If his location of this town 

 is correct, it could hardly be Haifa, but more easily the ruin Tell 

 es-Semak already mentioned. A city Boukoloi (=herdsmen) in this 

 region is not elsewhere referred to. The fact that this passage in 

 Strabo is the only other mention of a city Crocodile (as well as the 

 reference to Sycaminon and the general description of the coast*), 

 may point to a dependence, either direct or through the mediation 

 of other writers, of Pliny uj^on Strabo here^ The testimony of 

 these writers is worth this much at least: It indicates that at a time 

 probably near the beginning of oiir era the coast cities in this dis- 

 trict suffered a temporary eclipse. 



' Cp. Sidon, which in 350 B. C. was caiJtured and reduced to ashes by 

 Artaxerxes Ochus. By the time of the conquests of Alexander the Great 

 it was again a citj- of some importance. 



^ See above, p. 92. 



3 Date 63 B. C.-24 A. D. 



* Notice that, while Pliny follows the coast from S. to N. , Strabo enumerates 

 the cities in the opposite direction. Boukoloi thus stands in the place of Dor. 



^ This statement, in view of the rather scanty evidence, is made very 

 tentatively. 



