Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/473

 NYSSOS. 3. In Euboea, where the vine was said to put forth leaves and bear fruit the same day. (Steph. B. I. c.) 4. In the island of Nasos. (Steph. B. s. f.) NYSSOS. [Nysa, in Europe, No. 2.] 0. OAENEUM, a town of the Penestae, situated on a road leadint; into the country of the Labeates, which overlooked a narrow pass, formed by a moun- tain and the river Aktatus. It was taken by Perseus iu the campaign of b. C. 169. (Li v. xliii. 19.) [E. B.J.] OAEONES (Mela, iii. 6. § 8; Solin. 19. § 6) or OONAE (Plin. iv. 13. s. 27), islands in the Baltic off the coast of Sarmatia, tiie inhabitants of which were said to live on the ejrgs of birds and wild oats. OANUS {"Ciavos, Piiid. 01. v. 25: Frascolari), a small river on the S. coast of Sicily, flowing beneath t!ie wails of Camarina. [Camakina] [E. H. B.] OAR ACT A. [Ogykis.] OARUS. [Rha ] OASES ('Oo(T€is or Avdcreis, Strab. ii. p. 130, svii. pp. 790 — 791 ; Avacris noKis AiyvTrrov, Steph. B. s. v.: Elh. AiaffiTTjsor Ai'/acriris), was the gene- ral appellation among ancient writers given to spots of habitable and cultivable land lying in the midst of sandy deserts; but it was more especially applied to those verdant and well-watered tracts of the Libyan desert which connect like stepping-stones Eastern with Western and Southern Africa. The word Oasis is derived from the Coptic Ouah (mansio), a resting- place. (Peyron, Lexic. Ling. Copt. s. r.) Kant, iiuieed {Phys. Geog. vol. ii. pt. 1. p. 349), traces it, with less probability, to the Arabic Ilawa, a habita- tion, and Si or Zi a wilderness (comp. the Hebrew Ziph). Their physical circumstances, rather than their form, size, or position, constitute an Oasis; and the term is applied indifferently to kingdoms like Augila and Phazania (Fezzan) and to petty slips of pasture, such as the Oasis of El-Gerah. which is only four or five miles in circumference. The ancient writers described them as verdant islands, rising above the ocean of sand, and by their elevation escaping from being buried by it with the rest of the cultivable soil. Herodotus, for example (iv. 182), calls them KoXavoi. But, so far from rising above the level of the desert, the Oases are actually depressions of its sur- face, dints and hollows in the general bed of lime- .stone which forms its basis. The bottom of the Oases is of sandstone, on which rests a stratum of flay or marble, and these retain the water, which either percolates to them through the surrounding sand, or descends from the edges of the limestone rim that encircles these isolated spots, like a battlement. Within these moist hollows springs a vegetation presenting the most striking contrast to the general barrenness of the encircling wilderness. Timber, of various kinds and considerable girth, wheat, millet, date and fruit trees, flourish in the Oases, and combined with their verdant pastures to gain for them the appellation of " the Islands of the Blest." (Herod, iii. 26.) Both commercially and politically, the Oases were of the greatest im- portance to Aethiopia and Aegypt, which they con- nected with the gold and ivory regions of the south, and with the active traffic of Carthage in the west. Yet, although these kingdoms lost no opportunity of OASES. 457 pushing their emporia or colonies eastward towards the Red Sea and the Regio Aromatum, there is no positive monumental proof of their having occu- pied the Oases, at Jeast while under their native rulers. Perhaps the difficulty of crossing the desert before the camel was introduced into Aegypt — and the camel never appears on the Pharaonic monu- ments — may have prevented them from appropria- ting these outposts. The Persians, after their con- quest of Aegypt in b. c. 523, were the first permanent occupants of the Oases. Cambyses, indeed, failed in his attempt to reach Ammonium (Srwah) ■ but his successor Dareius Hystaspis established his authority securely in many of them. At the time when Herodotus visited Aegypt, the Oases were already military or commercial stations, permeating Libya from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. Under the Ptolemies and the Caesars, they were garrisoned by the Greeks and Romans, and were the seats of a numerous fixed population, as well as the halt- ing-places of the caravans ; under the per.vecu- tions of the Pagan emperors, they afforded shelter to fugitives from the magistrate ; and when the church became supreme, they shielded heretics from their orthodox opponents. The natural productions of these desert-islands will be enumerated under their particular names. One article of commerce, indeed, was common to them. Their alum was imported hy the Aegyptians, as essential to many of their manufactures. Amasis, afcording to Herodotus (ii. 180), contributed 1000 talents of alum towards the rebuilding of the temple at Delphi ; and the alum of ElKhargeh (Oasis Magna) still attracts and rewards modern specula- tors. Herodotus describes the Oases as a chain ex- tending from E. to W. through the Libyan Desert. He indeed comprehended under tnis term all the habitable spots of the Sahara, and says that they were in general ten days' journey apart from one another (iv. 181). But it is more usual to consider the following only as Oases proper. They are, with reference to Aegypt, five in number ; although, in- deed, Strabo (xviii. p. 1168) speaks of only three, the Great, the Lesser, and that of Ammon. 1. Ajoionium (El-Siwah), is the most northerly and the most remote from the Nile. There seem to have been two roads to it from Lower Aegypt, ; for when Alexander the Great visited the oracle of Ammon, he followed the coast as far as Paraetonium in Libya, and then proceeded inland almost in a direct northerly line. (Arrian, Anab. iii. 4 ; Quint. Curt. iv. 33.) He appears, however, to have re- turned to the neighbourhood of iMemphis by the more usual route, viz. a WSW. road, which passes the Natron Lakes [Nituiae] and runs to Teranieh, on the Rosetta branch of the Nile. (Minutoli, Jour- ney to the Temple of Jupiter Ammon.) There is some difficulty in understanding Herodotus's account of the distance between Thebes and Ammonium. He says that they are ten days' journey apart. (Rennell, Geogr. of Herod, vol. i. p. 577.) But the actual distance between them is 400 geographical miles ; and as the day's journey of a caravan never exceeds twenty, and is seldom more than sixteen of these miles, double the time allowed by him — not ten, but twenty days — is recpiired for performing it. Either, therefore, a station within ten days' journey of Upper Aegypt has been dropt out of the text of Herodotus, or he must intend another Oasis, or El-Siiuah is not the ancient Ammonium. If we bear in mind, however, that the Greater Oasis (^El-