TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI. 
195 
tioned by Strabo, and was carried on between the Cyreneans and 
Carthaginians. If you will only reflect now (continues Signor Della 
Celia, addressing himself as usual to his friend the Professor) that 
the Cyrenean liquid is very often used by Strabo, and others of the 
ancients, as a synonymous term for the silphium, you will agree 
with me in the trifling alteration which is thus effected in the text of 
the Grecian geographer.” 
We must confess that the substituting the word of for and, and a 
genitive case for an accusative, appears to us to be hazarding more 
than would be ventured upon by critics and commentators in 
general; and it is to be feared, at the same time, that there is 
scarcely more reason for the changes here proposed than there has 
been hesitation in suggesting them. For the plant called silphium 
was as much an article of commerce as the liquid which was ex- 
tracted from it, and we find them again mentioned as two distinct 
things in the very next page to the passage of Strabo which Signor 
Della Celia is so desirous of emending*. Pliny also distinguishes 
them by separate names, calling the extract “ laser,” and the plant 
“ laserpitium and many other authorities might be adduced to the 
same effect ; so that we may perhaps allow the passage of Strabo to 
remain in the state in which it usually appears, without any detri- 
ment to its genuine and proper signification. 
* O/X0g6i Se tti Y^vp'nvatcL rt TO aiXipiot (psqovaoi, xai Tov oTtoti Toy Kti^svctiov, ov to 
TiX<pioy omaSEV — Lib. xvii. p. 837. 
Pliny’s words are — Ab his proximum dicetur auctoritate clarissimum laserpitium, 
quod Graeci vocant silphion, in Cyrenaica provincia repertum : cujus succum vocant 
laser, magnificum in usu medicamentisque, &c. — (Hist. Nat., lib. xix. c. 3.) 
2C 2 
