TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI. 195 tioned by Strabo, and was carried on between the Cyreneans and Carthaginians. If you will only reflect now (continues Signor Della Celia, addressing himself as usual to his friend the Professor) that the Cyrenean liquid is very often used by Strabo, and others of the ancients, as a synonymous term for the silphium, you will agree with me in the trifling alteration which is thus effected in the text of the Grecian geographer.”

We must confess that the substituting the word of for and, and a genitive case for an accusative, appears to us to be hazarding more than would be ventured upon by critics and commentators in general; and it is to be feared, at the same time, that there is scarcely more reason for the changes here proposed than there has been hesitation in suggesting them. For the plant called silphium was as much an article of commerce as the liquid which was extracted from it, and we find them again mentioned as two distinct things in the very next page to the passage of Strabo which Signor Della Celia is so desirous of emending*. Pliny also distinguishes them by separate names, calling the extract “ laser,” and the plant “ laserpitium and many other authorities might be adduced to the same effect ; so that we may perhaps allow the passage of Strabo to remain in the state in which it usually appears, without any detriment to its genuine and proper signification.

* O/X0g6i Se tti Yvp'nvatcL rt TO aiXipiot (psqovaoi, xai Tov oTtoti Toy Ktisvctiov, ov to TiX<pioy omaSEV — Lib. xvii. p. 837.

Pliny’s words are — Ab his proximum dicetur auctoritate clarissimum laserpitium, quod Graeci vocant silphion, in Cyrenaica provincia repertum : cujus succum vocant laser, magnificum in usu medicamentisque, &c. — (Hist. Nat., lib. xix. c. 3.)

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