220 
JOURNEY FROM 
dation ; and when the latter proposed that the deputies from Car- 
thage should either be buried on the spot which they claimed as the 
boundary, or allow them to advance as far as they chose on the same 
conditions, the Philaeni immediately accepted the terms, and giving 
themselves up to the service of their country, were buried alive on 
the spot where the dispute had occurred. On the same spot two 
altars were consecrated to their memory by the people of Carthage, 
and other honours w^ere also decreed to them at home 
In the old map of Peutinger (as we have stated above) we find the 
Philmnean altars placed much farther to the westward in the neigh- 
bourhood of the little Syrtis; but the authorities of Ptolemy t-, Strabo, 
Pliny, and Mela, are sufficient to fix them in the Greater Syrtis ; 
and as they are expressly stated by Strabo (lib. 17) to have occurred 
before Automala:]:, in passing from west to east, we must suppose 
them to have existed somewhere in the tract of country just 
* Major Rennell has observed on this subject “ At the date of Hannibal s expe- 
dition to Italy, B. C. 217, the Carthaginian empire extended eastward to the Philse- 
nean altars, which stood at the south-east extremity of the Greater Syrtis. The story 
of the Philmni, as it is told, is in some points very improbable. It is said that the 
parties set out from their respective capitals, Carthage and Cyrene, and met at the place 
where the altars afterwards stood. Now the altars were situated at about seven-ninths of 
the way from Carthage towards Cyrene ; and the deception would have been too gross 
had it been pretended that the Carthaginian party had travelled seven parts in the nine, 
while the Cyrenean party had ti'avelled no more than two such parts of the way. 
Would either party have trusted the other with the adjustment of the time of setting 
out? Perhaps they mutually set out at the opposite extremes of the territory in dis- 
pute, and not from their respective capitals.” 
-|- That is, if Ave may read the passage in the third book of Strabo, quoted above, 
in the sense which we imagine he intended ; if not, he contradicts himself. 
j; Ei5’ 01 ipiXaivwv jSafjiOi xai rovrous Avropt-aXa (pqovqtov, ipvXax-nv t%oy, i5§v/a£vov Kara. 
rov j/.vy'pti rou y.oXTtou TTavros. — Lib. xvii. 
