6. Chap. 6. (6.)-Libya Mareotis.

CHAP. 6. (6.)—LIBYA MAREOTIS.

The region that follows is called Libya Mareotis[1], and borders upon Egypt. It is held by the Marmaridæ, the Adyrmachidæ, and, after them, the Mareotœ. The distance from Catabathmos to Parætonium is eighty-six miles. In this district is Apis[2], a place rendered famous by the religious belief of Egypt. From this town Parætonium 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.

1. The Mareotis of the time of the Ptolemies extended from Alexandria to the Gulf of Plinthinethes; and Libya was properly that portion of territory which extended from that Gulf to Catabathmos. Pliny is in error here in confounding the two appellations, or rather, blending them into one. It includes the eastern portion of the modern Barca, and the western division of Lower Egypt. It most probably received its name from the Lake Mareotis, and not the lake from it.

2. This was a seaport town on the northern coast of Africa, probably about eleven or twelve miles west of Parætonium, sometimes spoken of as belonging to Egypt, sometimes to Marmorica. Scylax places it at the western boundary of Egypt, on the frontier of the Marmaridæ. Ptolemy, like Pliny, speaks of it as being in the Libyan Nomos. The distances given in the MSS. of Pliny of this place from Parætonium are seventy-two, sixty-two, and twelve miles; the latter is probably the correct reading, as Strabc, 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 little doubt, from the words of Pliny here, that it was dedicated to the worship of the Egyptian god Apis, who was represented under the form of a bull.