396 PLINT's NATUEAL HISTOET. [Book Y. 



the Sun' there, and five cities in especial, those of Bere- 

 nice^, Arsinoe^, Ptolemais*, Apollonia', and Cyrene® itself. 

 Berenice is situate upon the outer promontory that bounds 

 the Syrtis ; it was formerly called the city of the Hesperides 

 (previously mentioned'), according to the fables of the 



1 The same that has been already mentioned in B. ii. c. 106. It is 

 mentioned by Herodotus and Pomponius Mela. 



2 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 importance only dates from the times of the 

 Ptolemies, when it was named Berenice, after the wife of Ptolemy III. 

 or Euerf^etes. Having been greatly reduced, it was fortified anew by the 

 Emperor Justinian. Its ruins are to be seen at the modem Ben Ghazi. 



3 So called from Arsinoe, the sister of Ptolemy Pliiladelphus. Its 

 earlier name was Taucheira or Teucheira, which name, according to 

 Marcus, it still retains. 



* Its ruins may still be seen at Tohneita or Tolomcta. 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 in circumference. 



5 Its ruins are still to be seen, bespeaking its former splendour, at the 

 modem Marsa Sousah. It was originally only the port of Cyrene, but 

 xmder the Ptolemies it flourished to such an extent as to ecHpse 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 Cjrenaica, 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 ex- 

 tensive commerce with Greece and Egypt, especially in silphium or 

 assafcetida, 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 silpliimn ; a head of which plant also appears on 

 the coins of the place. The pliilosophers Aristippus and Cameades were 

 bom here, as also the poet Callimachus. Its ruins, at the modem 

 Ghrennah, are very extensive, and are indicative of its former splendour. 



7 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 re- 

 gions of Cyrenaica. Scylax distinctly mentions the gardens and the lake 

 of the Hesperides in this vicinity, where we also find a people called 

 Hesperidse, or, as Herodotus names them, Euesperidse. It was probably 

 in consequence of this similarity of name, in a great degree, that the 

 gardens of the Hesperides were assigned to this locaHty. 



