396 PLINT's NATUEAL HISTORY. [Book V. tlie Sim^ there, and five cities in especial, those of Bere- nice-, Ai'sinoe^ Ptolemais^ Apolloma% and Cyrene^ itself, Berenice is situate upon the outer promontory that bounds the Sp'tis ; it was formerly called the city of the Hesperides (previously mentioned), according to the fables of the 1 The same that has been abeady mentioned in B. ii, c. 106. It is mentioned by Herodotus and Pomponius Mela. 2 Previously called Hesperis or Hesperides. It was the most westerly city of Cyrenaica, and stood just beyond the eastern extremity of the Greater Syrtis, on a promontory called Pseudopenias, and near the river Lethon. Its historical unportance only dates from the times of the Ptolemies, when it was named Berenice, after the vnfe of Ptolemy III. or Euergetes. Havmg been greatly reduced, it was fortified anew by the Emperor Justmian. Its ruins are to be seen at the modern Ben Grhazi. 3 So called from Arsinoe, the sister of Ptolemy Pliiladelphus. Its earUer name was Tauchefra or Teuchefra, which name, according to Marcus, it still retains. ^ Its ruins may still be seen at Tolmeita or Tolometa. It was situate on the N.W. coast of Cyrenaica, and originally bore the name of Barca. From which of the Ptolemies it took its name is not known. Its splendid ruins are not less than four miles m circumference. 5 Its ruuis are still to be seen, bespeaking its former splendour, at the modem Marsa Sousah. It was originally only the port of Cyrene, but mider the Ptolemies it floiunshed to such an extent as to eehpse that city. It is pretty certain that it was the Sozusa of the later Greek A^Titers. Eratosthenes was a native of this place. ^ The cliief city of Cyrenaica, and the most important Hellenic colony in Africa, the early settlers having extensively intermarried with wives of Libyan parentage. In its most prosperous times it maintained an ex- tensive commerce with Greece and Egypt, especially in silpliium or assafoetida, the plantations of Avliich, as mentioned in the present chapter, extended for miles in its vicinity. Great quantities of tliis plant were also exported to Capua in Southern Italy, where it was extensively employed in the manufacture of perfumes. The scene of the ' Rudens,' the most picturesque (if we may use the term) of the plays of Plautus, is laid in the vicinity of Cyrene, and frequent reference is made in it to the extensive cultivation of silphium ; a head of which plant also appears on the coins of the place. The philosophers Aristippus and Carneades were bom here, as also the poet Calhmachus. Its ruins, at the modem Glu'ennah, are very extensive, and are incUcative of its former splendour. ^ In C. 1 of the present Book. It was only the poetical fancy of the Greeks that fomad the fabled gardens of the Hesperides in the fertile re- gions of Cyrenaica. Scylax distinctly mentions the gardens and the lake of the Hesperides in this vicinity, where we also Ihid a people called Hesperidse, or, as Herodotus names them, Euesperidse. It was probably in consequence of this similarity of name, in a gre^^t degree, that the gardens of the Hesperides were assigned to this locality.
