220 JOURNEY FROM dation ; and when the latter proposed that the deputies from Carthage should either be buried on the spot which they claimed as the boundary, or allow them to advance as far as they chose on the same conditions, the Philaeni immediately accepted the terms, and giving themselves up to the service of their country, were buried alive on the spot where the dispute had occurred. On the same spot two altars were consecrated to their memory by the people of Carthage, and other honours were also decreed to them at home In the old map of Peutinger (as we have stated above) we find the Philmnean altars placed much farther to the westward in the neighbourhood of the little Syrtis; but the authorities of Ptolemy t-, Strabo, Pliny, and Mela, are sufficient to fix them in the Greater Syrtis ; and as they are expressly stated by Strabo (lib. 17) to have occurred before Automala:]:, in passing from west to east, we must suppose them to have existed somewhere in the tract of country just * Major Rennell has observed on this subject “ At the date of Hannibal s expedition to Italy, B. C. 217, the Carthaginian empire extended eastward to the Philsenean altars, which stood at the south-east extremity of the Greater Syrtis. The story of the Philmni, as it is told, is in some points very improbable. It is said that the parties set out from their respective capitals, Carthage and Cyrene, and met at the place where the altars afterwards stood. Now the altars were situated at about seven-ninths of the way from Carthage towards Cyrene ; and the deception would have been too gross had it been pretended that the Carthaginian party had travelled seven parts in the nine, while the Cyrenean party had ti'avelled no more than two such parts of the way.

Would either party have trusted the other with the adjustment of the time of setting out? Perhaps they mutually set out at the opposite extremes of the territory in dispute, and not from their respective capitals.” -|- That is, if Ave may read the passage in the third book of Strabo, quoted above, in the sense which we imagine he intended ; if not, he contradicts himself.

j; Ei5’ 01 ipiXaivwv jSafjiOi xai rovrous Avropt-aXa (pqovqtov, ipvXax-nv t%oy, i5§v/a£vov Kara.

rov j/.vy'pti rou y.oXTtou TTavros. — Lib. xvii.