TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI. 
29 
has led him to encounter the fatigues and privations of a journey 
like that which he has accomplished. He is the first European who 
has crossed the Greater Syrtis since the occupation of Northern 
Africa by the Komans ; at least he is the only one that we know of, 
since that period, who has published any account of such a journey ; 
and he is therefore entitled to the merit of having afforded us the 
only information which has been given for many centuries of an inter- 
esting and extensive tract of country. Eut as we shall frequently 
have occasion to refer to his work in the course of the present nar- 
rative, we trust that we shall not be suspected of undervaluing its 
merits, because we may sometimes find it necessary to point out 
what we conceive to be its errors. 
In considering the modern town of Tripoly as Oea, one difficulty 
will however present itself : Oea is no where mentioned as a port, 
that we have been able to discover ; whereas Tripoly must always 
have been one. But as many cities are mentioned as ports by one 
therefore less easy to imagine whence Pliny has derived his Neapolis, or what is his 
authority for the order in which he places the other cities of the district ; if indeed he 
intended them to be in order at all, which from his mention of Oea (the civitas Oeensis) 
conjointly with the river Cinyphus% we might probably be authorized in denying. We 
find Abrotonum also introduced by Cellarius, instead of Acholla, in the passage which 
he has quoted from Mela : the proper reading is — Hadrumetum, Leptis, Clypea, Acholla, 
Taphrure**, Neapolis, hiiic ad Syrtim adjacent, ut inter iguobilia celeberrimae. 
» The Taphrure of Mela must not be eonfounded with Pliny’s Taphra, which is the same with Graphara 
or Garapha. 
*> Mela has however done the same (ultra est Oea oppidum, et Cinypus fluvius, per uberrima arva 
decidens. . .) and the difficulty is increased by what follows — turn Leptis altera, &c. ; both accounts are very 
confused, and open to much discussion, but this is not the place for it, and we have already perhaps said too 
much upon the subject. 
