BENGAZI. 
353 
time allowed us to copy, will be found at the end of the chapter, with 
further details of the buildings ; and in the mean time we refer our 
readers to the plan of the city annexed. 
Teuchira, or Tauchira, was a town of Barca, of considerable anti- 
quity : its name was changed under the Ptolemies to Arsinoe, and 
subsequently (by Mark Antony) to Cleopatris ; but its original 
appellation has survived the others, and it is to this day distin- 
guished by the name of Tauchira, or Tocra, under which it is known 
to the Arabs. 
The walls of Teuchira (we are informed by Procopius*) were 
repaired under the emperor .Justinian, and they still remain in a 
state of perfection which sufficiently proves the solidity of the work. 
They are built of very massy blocks of stone, conformably with the 
statement of the historian, many of which have formed parts of much 
earlier buildings, as the inscriptions found upon them demonstrate. 
\ ery little of the history of Teuchira has come down to us ; and 
we scarcely know more of it, than that it formed one of the cities of 
the Pentapolis. Although it is situated close to the sea, which washes 
the northern face of it, Teuchira could never have been a port ; as it 
affords no protection whatever for vessels derived from its natural 
position, and there are not the slightest traces now visible of anything 
like a cothon having been constructed there ; which, indeed, it would 
have been folly to have attempted in the exposed situation of the 
place f . 
* De Aeclificiis. 
t The water is also too deep to admit of one, and becomes so on a sudden within 
few feet of the beach. 
a 
