Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/54

CHAP. 1.
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Egypt.The geographers of antiquity have frequently hesitated to what portion of the globe they should ascribe Egypt^[1]. By its situation, that celebrated kingdom is included within the immense peninsula of Africa ; but it is accessible only on the side of Asia, whose revolutions, in almost every period of history, Egypt has humbly obeyed. A Roman prefect was seated on the splendid throne of the Ptolemies ; and the iron sceptre of the mamalukes is now in the hands of a Turkish pasha. The Nile flows down the country, above five hundred miles from the tropic of Cancer to the Mediterranean, and marks on either side the extent of fertility by the measure of its inundations. Cyrene, situate towards the west, and along the seacoast, was first a Greek colony, afterwards a province of Egypt, and is now lost in the desert of Barca.

Africa.From Cyrene to the ocean, the coast of Africa extends above fifteen hundred miles ; yet so closely is it pressed between the Mediterranean and the Sahara, or sandy desert, that its breadth seldom exceeds four-score or an hundred miles. The eastern division was considered by the Romans as the more peculiar and proper province of Africa. Till the arrival of the Phoenician colonies, that fertile country was inhabited by the Libyans, the most savage of mankind. Under the immediate jurisdiction of Carthage, it became the centre of commerce and empire ; but the republic of Carthage is now degenerated into the feeble and disorderly states of Tripoli and Tunis. The military government of Algiers oppresses the wide extent of Numidia, as it was once united under Massinissa and Jugurtha : but in the time of Augustus, the limits of Numidia were contracted ; and at least two thirds of the country acquiesced in the name of Mauritania, with the epithet of Caesariensis. The genuine Mauritania,

1. Ptolemy and Strabo, with the modern geographers, fix the isthmus of Suez as the boundary of Asia and Africa. Dionysius, Mela, Pliny, Sallust, Hirtius, and Solinus, have preferred for that purpose the western branch of the Nile, or even the great Catabathmus, or descent ; which last would assign to Asia not only Egypt, but part of Libya.