TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI. 
155 
In traversing this part of the Syrtis, Signor Della Celia discovered 
a square column of tolerable height and placed upon a pedestal. 
It was composed, he says, of sandstone, but so corroded by time 
that the characters which entirely covered its four sides had become 
altogether unintelligible. An hour afterwards he arrived at a 
second, and, after a similar interval, at a third of these erections, all 
equally covered with waiting and so much decayed that, what with 
the little time which he had at his command, and the state of ruin 
in which the pillars were found, he could not succeed in putting 
together a single word of their inscriptions. “ Opposite to the first 
of these columns” (he adds) “ on the part next the sea, rise the 
remains of a tower surmounted with a cupola, and this spot is called 
Elbenia*.” 
The Doctor confesses himself at a loss to decide for what purpose 
these pillars could have been erected ; but suggests that, supposing 
Zdffran to be Aspis, the ancient tower with a cupola which is near it, 
and, “ as Strabo says, to Aspis,” must inevitably be the Tv^yog, 
or tower named Euphrantas of that geographer. From this conclu- 
sion he is induced to suspect that, as the tower of Euphrantas was 
the boundary of the Cyrenaic and Carthaginian territory under the 
Ptolemies, the three pillars above mentioned were erected to mark 
the limits of those countries, as well as to record other matters which 
(he says) were usually engraved by the ancients on objects of this 
nature. 
Finding his courage rise at this happy coincidence of ancient with 
* Viaggio da Tripoli, &c., p. 77, 78. 
X 2 
