Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/409

 Chap. 1.] ACCOUNT OF COUNTRIES, ETC. 375 merly founded by Antaeus, and afterwards received the name of Traducta Julia from Claudius Caesar, when he esta^ blished a colony there. It is thirty miles distant from Belong a town of Baetica, where the passage across is the shortest. At a distance of twenty-five miles from Tingi, upon the shores of the ocean^, we come to Julia Cou- stautia Zilis"*, a colony of Augustus. This place is exempt from all subjection to the kings of Mauritania, and is in- cluded in the legal jurisdiction of Baetica. Thirty-two miles distant from Julia Constantia is Lixos*, which was v made a Eoman colony by Claudius Caesar, and which has been the subject of such wondrous fables, related by the Krriters of antiquity. At this place, according to the story, was the palace of Antaeus ; this was the scene of his combat with Hercules, and here were the gardens of the Hesperides^. An arm of the sea flows into the land here, its name from Tinge, the wife of Antseus, the giant, who was slain by Hercules. His tomb, which formed a hill, in the shape of a man. stretched out at full length, was shown near the town of Tingis to a late period. It was also beheved, that whenever a portion of the earth covering the body was taken away, it rained until the hole was filled up again. Sertorius is said to have dug away a portion of the hiU ; but, on discovering a skeleton sixty cubits in length, he was struck with horror, and had it immediately covered again. Procopius says, that the fortress of this place was built by the Canaanites, who were driven by the Jews out of Palestine. ^ It has been supposed by Salmasius and others of the learned, that Pliny by mistake here attributes to Claudius the formation of a colony which was really estabhshed by either Julius Csesar or Augustus. It is more probable, however, that Claudius, at a later period, ordered it to be called " Traducta Juha," or " the removed Colony of Julia," in re- membrance of a colony having proceeded thence to Spain in the time of Juhus Caesar. Claudius liimself, as stated in the text, estabhshed a colony here. 2 Its ruins are to be seen at Belonia, or Bolonia, tliree Spanish miles west of the modem Tarifa. 3 At tliis point Phny begins his description of the western side of Africa. of the river Zileia. It is also mentioned by Strabo and Antoniims. 5 Now El Araiche, or Larache, on the river Lucos. ^ Mentioned again in B. ix. c. 4 and c. 5 of the present Book, where Phny speaks of them as situate elsewhere. The story of Antaeus is further enlarged upon by Solinus, B. xxiv. j Lucan, B. iv. 1. 589, et seq. ; and Martian us Capella, B. vi.
 * Now Arzilla, in the territory of Fez. Ptolemy places it at tlie mouth