MERGE TO GYRENE. 
559 
Irasa, on which they built the city of Cyrene, about the third year, 
according to Eusebius, of the thirty-seventh Olympiad. We find 
little more worth relating of Battus, except, perhaps, that he lost 
the impediment in his speech, for which he had originally consulted 
the oracle, in the following extraordinary manner. As he wandered 
abroad one day unattended, a lion sprung very unexpectedly upon 
him ; and the cry of surprise and dismay which he uttered so terrified 
the monarch of the woods, that he fled with the utmost precipitation. 
At the same moment Battus discovered that he had lost the infir- 
mity under which he had laboured ; for the sudden exertion of 
voice just alluded to had taken it effectually away. After a reign 
of forty years, Battus was succeeded by his son Arcesilaus, of wdiom 
little further is known, than that he reigned for sixteen years. 
During these two reigns, no accession appears to have been made 
to the numbers of the original colony ; under Battus the third, how- 
ever, who was distinguished by the appellation of (the 
prosperous,) another migration took place from Greece ; and the lands 
already occupied not being sufficient for the accommodation of the 
new colonists, an inroad was made upon the territory of the Libyan 
inhabitants, and one of their chiefs, whom Herodotus calls Adicran, 
was deprived of a considerable part of his dominions. 
The libyans applied for support to the Egyptians ; and Apries, 
who at that time reigned over Egypt, (and is supposed to be the 
Pharaoh Hophra of Scripture,) despatched a large army to their 
assistance. The Cyreneans, aware of the approach of their invaders, 
drew up their forces at Irasa, near the fountain called by Herodotus 
