396 
plify's natueal history. 
[Book Y. 
the Sun^ ttere, and five cities in especial, those of Eere- 
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 
^ The same that has been abeady 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 Euergetes. Having been greatly reduced, it was fortified anew by the 
Emperor Justinian. Its ruins are to be seen at the modern Ben Grhazi. 
3 So called from Arsinoe, the sister of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Its 
earlier name was Taucheira or Teucheira, which name, according to 
Marcus, it still retains. 
^ Its ruins may stiH be seen at Tolmeita or Tolometa. It was situate 
on the N.W. coast of Cyrenaica, and originally bore the name of Barca. 
Erom which of the Ptolemies it took its name is not known. Its splendid 
ruins are not less than fom^ miles in circumference. 
^ Its ruins are still to be seen, bespeaking its former splendour, at the 
modern Marsa Sousah. It was originally only the port of Cyrene, but 
under the Ptolemies it floiu'ished to such an extent as to ecHpse that 
city. It is pretty certain that it was the Sozusa of the later Grreek writers. 
Eratosthenes was a native of this place. 
^ The chief city of Cyrenaica, 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 Grreece and Egypt, especially in silphium or 
assafoetida, the plantations of wliich, as mentioned in the present chapter, 
extended for miles in its vicinity. Grreat 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 silphium ; a head of wliich plant also appears on 
the coins of the place. The philosophers Aristippus and Carneades were 
bom here, as also the poet Callimachus. Its ruins, at the modern 
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 
Hesperidge, 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 locality. 
