892 
plii^t's katueal histoet. 
[Book Y. 
of tlieir quicksands and tlie ebb and flow of the sea. Poly- 
bius states the distance from Carthage to the Lesser Syrtis, 
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 the 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 Graramantes^, distant twelve days' journey from 
the Augylse^. Above the Garamantes was formerly the na- 
G-ulf of Cabes, and the Greater the Gulf of Sydra. The country situate 
between the two Syrtes is called Tripoli, formerly TripoHs, a name 
which, according to SoUnus, it owed to its three cities, Sabrata, Leptis, 
and CEa. 
^ 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 which 
attend those who approach it by the hne 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 applied 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 'Garamantes' denoted the people of Phazania, the mo- 
dern Fezzan, wliich forms by far the largest oasis in the Grand Desert 
of Zahara. 
Augylae, 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 accomit given by Herodotus of the tribes of ISTorthern Africa, has 
transferred to the Augylse 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 Eennell 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 Mourzouk. Later autho- 
rities, however, place the village of Aujelah in 29° 15' North Lat. and 
21° 55' East Long. 
