Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/54

36 HISTORY OF GREECE. (about 510 E.C.) to expel the Spartan prince Dorieus from im settlement near the river Kinyps. Near that spot was after- wards planted, by Phenician or Carthaginian exiles, the town of Leptis Magna l (now Lebida), which does not seem to have existed in the time of Herodotus. Nor does the latter historian notice the Marmaridas, who appear as the principal Libyan tribe noar the west of Egypt, between the age of Skylax and the third century of the Christian era. Some migration or revolution subsequent to the time of Herodotus must have brought this name into predominance. 2 The interior country, stretching westward from Egypt along the thirtieth and thirty-first parallel of latitude, to the Great Syrtis, and then along the southern shore of that gulf, is to a great degree low and sandy, and quite destitute of trees ; yet afford- ing in many parts water, herbage, and a fertile soil. 3 But the ' The Carthaginian establishment Neapolis is mentioned by Skylax (c. 109), and Strabo states that Leptis was another name for the same place (xvii, p. 835). 2 Skylax, c. 107; Vopiscus, Vit. Prob. c. 9; Strabo, xvii, p. 838; Pliny, II. N. v, 5. From the Libyan tribe Marmaridae was derived the name Marmarika, applied to that region. 3 Ta-tivi] re Kal fyappudjje (Herodot. iv, 191); Sallust, Bell. Jugnrthin. c. 17. Captain Beechey points out the mistaken conceptions which have been entertained of this region : " It is not only in the works of early writers that we find the nature of the Syrtis misunderstood ; for the whole of the space between Mesuratu ()'. e. the cape which forms the western extremity of the Great Syrtis) ami Alexandria is described by Leo Africanus, under the title of Barka, as a wild and desert country, where there is neither water nor land capable of cultivation. He tells us that the most powerful among the Mohammedan invaders possessed themselves of the fertile parts of the coast, leaving the others only the desert for their abode, exposed to all the miseries and pri- vations attendant upon it; for this desert (he continues) is far removed from any habitations, and nothing is produced there whatever. So that if these poor people would have a supply of grain, or of any other articles necessary to their existence, they are obliged to pledge their children to the Sicilians who visit the coast; who, on providing them with these things carry off the children they have received " It appears to be chiefly from Leo Africanus that modern historians hava derived their idea of what they term the district and desert of Barka. Yt/t the whole of the Cvrenaica is comprehended within the limits which they