392 PLurr's TTATUEAL HISTOET. [Book T. 



of their quicksands and the ebb and flow of the sea. Poly- 

 bius states the distance from Carthage to the Lesser Syrtia, 

 the one which is nearest to it, to be 300 miles. The inlet 

 to it he also states to be 100 miles across, and its circum- 

 ference 300. There is also a way^ to it by land, to find 

 which we must employ the guidance of tlie stars and cross 

 deserts which present nothing but sand and serpents. After 

 passing these we come to forests filled with vast multitudes 

 of wild beasts and elephants, then desert wastes^, and beyond 

 them the Garamantes', distant twelve days' journey from 

 the Augylae*. Above the Garamantes was formerly the na- 



Gulf of Cab^s, and the Greatefr the Gulf of Sydra. The country situate 

 between the two Syrtes is called Tripoli, formerly Tripohs, a name 

 wliich, according to Solinus, it owed to its three cities, Sabrata, Leptis, 

 a^dGEa. 



^ Marcus observes with reference to this passage, that both Hardouin 

 and Poinsinet have mistaken its meaning. They evidently think that Pliny 

 is speaking here of a route to the Syrtes leading from the interior of 

 Africa, whereas it is pretty clear that he is speaking of the dangers wliich 

 attend those who approach it by the hue of the sea-coast, as Cato did, on 

 his march to Utica, so beautifully described by Lucan in his Ninth Book. 

 This is no doubt the same route which was taken by the caravans on their 

 passage from Lebida, the ancient Leptis, to Berenice in Cyrenaica. 



2 Those which we find at the middle of the coast bordering upon the 

 Greater Syrtis, and which separate the mountains of Fezzan and Atlas 

 from Cyrenaica and Barca. 



3 In its widest sense this name is apphed to aU the Libyan tribes in- 

 habiting the Oases on the eastern part of the Great Desert, as the Gsetu- 

 Hans inhabited its western part, the boundary between the two nations 

 being drawn at the sources of the Bagrada and the mountain Usargala. 

 In the stricter sense however, and in which the term must be here under- 

 stood, the name 'Ga,ramantes' denoted the people of Phazania, the mo- 

 dem Fezzan, which forms by far the largest oasis in the Grand Desert 

 of Zahara. 



t Augyla;, now Aujelah, was an oasis in the desert of Barca, in the 

 region of Cyrenaica, about 3^° south of Cyrene. It has been remarked 

 that Pliny, here and in the Eighth Chapter of the present Book, in abridg- 

 ing the accoimt given by Herodotus of the tribes of Northern Africa, has 

 transferred to the Augylae what that author really says of the Nasamones. 

 This oasis forms one of the chief stations on the caravan route from Cairo 

 to Fezzan. It is placed by Rennell in 30° 3' North Lat. and 22° 46' East 

 Long., 180 miles south-east of Barca, 180 west by north of Siwah, the 

 ancient Ammonium, and 426 east by north of Mourzoiik. Later autho- 

 rities, however, place the village of Aujelah in 29° 15' North Lat. and 

 21° 55' East Long. 



