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Rh juices were highly esteemed all over Greece, and employed largely both as food and as medicine. The monopoly of this valuable plant, coupled with the other choice products of the place, made Cyrenè one of the wealthiest cities in the Grecian world. Splendid buildings, whose ruins may yet be traced, rose around the "fountain of Apollo." The beautiful parks of the Cyrenaic merchant-princes gained for the place the title of "the garden of Aphroditè." Horse-breeding, the invariable accompaniment (as we have seen) of prosperity in a Greek state, was carried on largely by the great families; and in spite of the cost and difficulty of conveying racers and chariots from Africa to Greece, the Greeks of Libya were not unfrequently represented in the great equestrian competitions of the mother country, and especially in those at Delphi, whose oracle was believed to have originally enjoined the foundation of the Cyrenaic colony. Other forms of athleticism also flourished at Cyrenè, and boxers and racers from that city won many prizes in the great Greek games, Ælian has an amusing anecdote of a Cyrenaic boxer, whose teeth were loosened by an unlucky blow of his antagonist. But the champion was not discouraged by this misadventure; he swallowed his teeth, continued the contest, and was victorious!

Three of Pindar's Pythian Odes—the fourth, the fifth, and the ninth—commemorate victories of Cyrenaic competitors at Delphi, and embody ancient legends of Cyrenè, and of its ruling family, the "Bat-