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JOURNEY FROM 
of the diameter of the gulf, they might just as well have been taken for 
the road-distance between Mesurata and Bengazi; the measurements 
which we find in the Itinerary of Antoninus, of the distance between 
Leptis Magna and Berenice, come nearer to the actual road-distance 
between these places, by one hundred and thirty Roman miles, than 
that which is obtained by adding the seventy-three miles between 
Lebida and Mesurata to the circumference of the gulf given by Pliny ; 
for the whole distance of the Itinerary from Leptis to Berenice is not 
estimated at more than five hundred and sixty-eight Roman miles, 
while those above mentioned being added together would make no less 
than six hundred and ninety-eight. So that the circumference of the 
gulf which may be deduced from the Itinerary differs only from the 
actual circuit by road-distance in thirty-seven Roman miles, or 
twenty-nine and a half geographic. 
But instead of being surprized at the differences which obtain be- 
tween the measurements which have descended to us from the ancients, 
we ought rather, perhaps, to wonder that they do not differ even more 
than they are usually found to do from each other. It is true that 
abundant materials were furnished to the early geographers, by the nu- 
merous military and naval expeditions which enterprizing or ambitious 
states had fitted out for the purposes of conquest or discovery* ; but 
* Sesostris is said to have recorded his march in maps, and to have given copies of 
them not only to the Egyptians, but to the remote and uninformed inhabitants of Scy- 
thia, who viewed them with the greatest astonishment. The expeditions of Alexander 
furnished the materials for an interesting survey, a copy of which was given to Patroclus 
the geographer; it was from the work of Patroclus that Eratosthenes derived his prin- 
cipal materials in constructing the Oriental part of his map of the world, and it is 
frequently quoted both by Strabo and Pliny. 
Many 
