TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI. 
221 
described, since the fortress of Automala is laid down by that geo- 
grapher in the bottom of the gulf*. There is a difficulty in recon- 
cihng the accounts of Pliny and Mela on this point ; for the Philae- 
nean altars are mentioned by the former of these writers as placed 
on the eastern boundary of the country of the Lotophagi, which he 
lays down in the bottom of the gulf f . Mela may be understood to 
assign the same position to the altars (although something appears 
wanting in the text in this part to connect the two sentences toge- 
ther) :j; ; but then he makes the country of the Lotophagi commence 
at the Borion (Boreum) Promontorium, and finish at the promontory 
of Phycus (answering to Ras Sem), and this will place the Lotophagi 
far in the Cyrenaica, and out of the Gulf of Syrtis altogether, which 
finishes at the Boreum Promontorium. 
It seems to be with the intention of reconciling these accounts 
in some degree, that Cellarius has placed a Boreum Promontorium 
and Oppidum in the bottom of the gulf. And he is indeed some- 
what justified in doing so, by the position assigned to a city called 
Boreum by Procopius, which is mentioned by that writer as 
the most western city of the Pentapolis, and distant about four days 
* We have adopted the positions assigned by Strabo to these places, as being more 
exactly defined ; and because it may be presumed that he saw the objects which he 
describes, with the exception of the altars of the Philaeni, which he has stated to have 
been no longer extant in his time. 
■f* Nat. Hist. lib. v. cap. 5. 
I Ejus promontorium est Borion, ab eoque incipiens ora quam Lotophagi tenuisse 
dicuntur, usque ad Phycunta (et id promontorium est) importuoso litore pertinet. Ara- 
ipsae nomen ex Philaenis fratribus traxere, qui contra Cyrenaicos missi, &c. — De Situ 
Orbis, lib. i. cap. vii. 
