Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/436

 402 plift's NATUEAL HISTOET, [Book Y. miles. In tbis district is Apis^ a place rendered famous by the religious belief of Egypt. From this town Paraetonium is distant sixty-two miles, and from thence to Alexandria the distance is 200 miles, the breadth of the district being 169. Eratosthenes says that it is 525 miles by land from Cyrene to Alexandria ; while Agrippa gives the length of the whole of Africa from the Atlantic Sea, and including Lower Egypt, as 3040 miles. Polybius and Eratosthenes, who are generally considered as remarkable for their extreme correctness, state the length to be, from the ocean to Great Carthage 1100 miles, and from Carthage to Canopus, the nearest mouth of the Nile, 1628 miles ; while Isidorus speaks of the distance from Tingi to Canopus as being 3599 miles. Artemidorus makes this last distance forty miles less than Isidorus. CHAP. 7. (7.) — THE ISLAIfDS IN THE VICINITY OF AEEICA. These seas contain not so very many islands. The most famous among them is Meninx^, twenty-five miles in length and twenty-two in breadth: by Eratosthenes it is called Lotophagitis. This island has two towns, Meninx on the side which faces Africa, and Troas on the other ; it is situate off the promontory which lies on the right-hand side of the Lesser Syrtis, at a distance of a mile and a half. One hun- dred miles from this island, and opposite the promontory that lies on the left, is the free island of Cercina^, with a ^ This was a seaport town on the northern coast of Africa, probably about eleven or twelve miles west of Pargetonium, sometimes spoken of as belonging to Egypt, sometimes to Marmorica. Scylax places it at the western boundary of Egypt, on the frontier of the Marmaridse. Ptolemy, hke Pliny, speaks of it as being in the Libyan Nomos. The distances given m the MSS. of Pliny of this place from Paraetonium are seventy- two, sixty-two, and twelve miles ; the latter is probably the correct reading, as Strabo, B. xvii., makes the distance 100 stadia. It is extremely doubtful whether the Apis mentioned by Herodotus, B. ii. c. 18, can be the same place : but there is Kttle doubt, from the words of Pliny here, that it was dedicated to the worsliip of the Egyptian god Apis, who was represented under the form of a buU. 2 Now caUed Zerbi and Jerba, derived from the name of Grirba, which even in the time of Aurehus Victor, had supplanted that of Meninx. It is situate in the Gulf of Cabes. According to SoHnus, C. Marius lay in concealment here for some time. It was famous for its purple. See B. ix. c. 60. 3 jj^Q^y called Kerkeni, Karkenah, or Eamlah.