TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI.

221 described, since the fortress of Automala is laid down by that geographer in the bottom of the gulf*. There is a difficulty in reconcihng the accounts of Pliny and Mela on this point ; for the Philaenean altars are mentioned by the former of these writers as placed on the eastern boundary of the country of the Lotophagi, which he lays down in the bottom of the gulf f . Mela may be understood to assign the same position to the altars (although something appears wanting in the text in this part to connect the two sentences together) :j; ; but then he makes the country of the Lotophagi commence at the Borion (Boreum) Promontorium, and finish at the promontory of Phycus (answering to Ras Sem), and this will place the Lotophagi far in the Cyrenaica, and out of the Gulf of Syrtis altogether, which finishes at the Boreum Promontorium.

It seems to be with the intention of reconciling these accounts in some degree, that Cellarius has placed a Boreum Promontorium and Oppidum in the bottom of the gulf. And he is indeed somewhat justified in doing so, by the position assigned to a city called Boreum by Procopius, which is mentioned by that writer as the most western city of the Pentapolis, and distant about four days * We have adopted the positions assigned by Strabo to these places, as being more exactly defined ; and because it may be presumed that he saw the objects which he describes, with the exception of the altars of the Philaeni, which he has stated to have been no longer extant in his time.

■f* Nat. Hist. lib. v. cap. 5. I Ejus promontorium est Borion, ab eoque incipiens ora quam Lotophagi tenuisse dicuntur, usque ad Phycunta (et id promontorium est) importuoso litore pertinet. Araipsae nomen ex Philaenis fratribus traxere, qui contra Cyrenaicos missi, &c. — De Situ Orbis, lib. i. cap. vii.