402 
pliis't's nattjeal history. 
[Book Y. 
miles. In this district is Apis^, a place rendered famous by 
the religious belief of Egypt. Prom this town Parsetonium 
is distant sixty-two miles, and from thence to Alexandria 
the distance is 200 miles, the breadth of the district being 
169. Eratosthenes says that it is 525 miles by land from 
Cyrene to Alexandria; while Agrippa gives the length of 
the whole of Africa from the Atlantic Sea, and including 
Lower Egypt, as 3040 miles. Polybius and Eratosthenes, 
who are generally considered as remarkable for their extreme 
correctness, state the length to be, from the ocean to Grreat 
Carthage 1100 miles, and from Carthage to Canopus, the 
nearest mouth of the Nile, 1628 miles ; while Isidorus speaks 
of the distance from Tingi to Canopus as being 3599 miles. 
Artemidorus makes this last distance forty miles less than 
Isidorus. 
CHAP. 7. (7.) — THE ISLANDS IN THE YICINITY OP APEICA. 
These seas contain not so very many islands. The most 
famous among them is Meninx^, twenty-five miles in length 
and twenty-two in breadth : by Eratosthenes it is called 
Lotophagitis. This island has two tow^ns, Meninx on the 
side which faces Africa, and Troas on the other ; it is situate 
oiF the promontory which lies on the right-hand side of the 
Lesser Syrtis, at a distance of a mile and a half. One hun- 
dred miles from this island, and opposite the promontory 
that lies on the left, is the free island of Cercina^, with a 
^ This was a seaport town on the northern coast of Africa, probably 
about eleven or twelve miles west of Parsetonium, sometimes spoken of 
as belonging to Egypt, sometimes to Marmorica. Scylax places it at the 
western boundary of Egypt, on the frontier of the Marmaridse. Ptolemy, 
like Pliny, speaks of it as being in the Libyan Nomos. The distances 
given m the MSS. of PHny of this place from Parsetonium are seventy- 
two, sixty-two, and twelve miles ; the latter is probably the correct 
reading, as Strabo, B. xvii., makes the distance 100 stadia. It is extremely 
doubtful whether the Apis mentioned by Herodotus, B. ii. c. 18, can be 
the same place : but there is Uttle doubt, from the words of Pliny here, 
that it was dedicated to the worship of the Egyptian god Apis, who was 
-represented under the form of a bull. 
2 Now called Zerbi and Jerba, derived from the name of Grirba, which i 
even in the time of Aurehus Yictor, had supplanted that of Meninx. It 
is situate in the Grulf of Cabes. According to Solinus, C. Marius lay in 
concealment here for some time. It was famous for its purple. See 
iB. ix. c. 60. 3 ]>^ow called Kerkeni, Xarkenah, or Eamlah. 
I 
ail 
