Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/458

 424! PLINT's NATURAL HISTORY. [Book Y. and the Tigris was called Mesopotamia, that beyond Taurus Sophene, and that on this side of the same chain Comagene. Beyond Armenia was the country of Adiabene, anciently called Ass}Tia, and at the part where it joins up to Cilicia, it was called Antiochia. Its length, between Cilicia and Arabia is 470 miles, and its breadth, from Seleucia Pieria^ to Zeugma^, a town on the Euphrates, 175. Those who make a still more minute division of this country will have it that Phoenice is surrounded by Syria, and that first comes the maritime coast of Syria, part of which is Idumsea and Judaea, after that Phoenice, and then Syria. The whole of the tract of sea that lies in front of these shores is called the Phoe- nician Sea. The Phoenician people enjoy the glory of having been the inventors of letters'*, and the first discoverers of the sciences of astronomy, navigation, and the art of war. CHAP. 14. — IDTJM^A, PAL.ESTII^A, AIN'D SAMARIA. On leaving Pelusium we come to the Camp of Cha- brias", Mount Casius^, the temple of Jupiter Casius, and the tomb of Pompeius Magnus. Ostracine^, at a distance of sixty-five miles from Pelusium, is the frontier town of Ara- ' Or Ostracine, the northern point of Arabia. 2 This was a great fortress of Syria founded by Seleucus B.C. 300, at the foot of Mount Pieria and overhanging the Mediterranean, four miles north of the Orontes and twelve miles west of Antioch. It had fallen entirely to decay ia the sixth century of otu* era. There are considerable ruins of its harbour and mole, its walls and necropoUs. They bear the name of Seleukeh or Kepse. 3 From the Greek ^evyiia, " a junction ;" built by Seleucus Nicator on the borders of Commagene and Cyrrhestice, on. the west bank of the Euphrates, where the river had been crossed by a bridge of boats con- structed by Alexander the Great. The modern Bumkaleh is supposed to occupy its site. ^ On this svibject see B. vii. c. 57. The invention of letters and the first cultivation of the science of astronomy have been claimed for the Egy]5tians and other nations. The Tyrians were probably the first who applied the science of astronomy to the piu'poses of navigation. There is little doubt that warfare must have been studied as an art long before the existence of the Phoenician nation. 5 Strabo places this between Mount Casius and Pelusium. " See C. 12 of the present Book. Chabrias the Athenian aided "Neo- tanebus II. against his revolted subjects. ? Its ruins are to be seen on the present Ras Straki,