Chap. 16.] ACCOUNT OF COTTNTRIES, ETC. 431 



people that live apart from the world, and marvellous beyond 

 all others throughout the whole earth, for they have no women 

 among them ; to sexual desire they are strangers ; money 

 they have none ; the palm-trees are their only companions. 

 Day after day, however, their numbers are fully recruited by 

 multitudes of strangers that resort to them, driven thither 

 to adopt their usages by the tempests of fortune, and wearied 

 with the miseries of life. Thus it is, that throi%h thousands 

 of ages, incredible to relate, this people eternally prolongs 

 its existence, witliout a single birth taking place there ; so 

 fruitful a source of population to it is that weariness of 

 life which is felt by others. Below this people was for- 

 merly the town of Engadda\ second only to Hierosolyma in 

 the fertility of its soil and its groves of palm-trees ; now, 

 like it, it is another heap of ashes. Next to it we come to 

 Masada^, a fortress on a rock, not far from Lake Asphaltites. 

 Thus much concerning Judaja. 



CHAP. 16. (18.) — DECAP0LI8. 



On the side of Sjrria, joining up to Judaea, is the region 

 of Decapolis^, so called from the number of its cities ; as to 

 which all writers are not agreed. Most of them, however, 

 agree in speaking of Damascus* as one, a place fertilized 



tained the same doctrines ; but the latter were distinguished by a more 

 rigid mode of hfe. It has been suggested by Taylor, the editor of 

 * Cahnet's Dictionary of the Bible,' that John the Baptist belonged to 

 this sect. 



^ Or Engedi. Its ancient name was Hazezon- Tamar, when it was 

 inhabited by the Amorit^s. See Gen. xiv. 7 ; 2 Chron. xx. 2. Accord- 

 ing to Josephus, it gave name to one of the fifteen toparchies of Judsea. 

 It still retains its name, Ain-Jedey, or " Fountain of the Goats," and 

 was so called from a spring which issued out of the limestone rock at the 

 base of a lofty cliiF. 



'^ Its site is now known as Sebbeh, on the south-west of the Dead Sea. 



3 Ae.Ka TToXets, the " Ten Cities." He alludes to the circumstance, 

 that the number of cities varied from timfe to time in this district ; 

 one being destroyed in warfare, and others suddenly rising from its 

 foundation. 



* The capital city of Syria, both in ancient and modem times. It is 

 now called Es-Sham. The only epithet given to it by the ancient poets 

 is that of " Tentosa," or *' windy," found in the Pharsaha of Lucan, B. iii. 

 1. 215, wliich, it has been remarked, is anything but appropriately chosen. 



