TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI. 255 “is about nine hundred and thirty stadia*; and its diameter, at the bottom of the Gulf, is one thousand five hundred stadia : the breadth of the entrance (or mouth) is about the same | that is, about fifteen hundred stadia. Here we have a circumference considerably less than its diameter, and no way of getting rid of a difficulty so formidable to mathematicians, without making such decided alterations in the text as no soberminded editor would hazard:]:. Various readings have been given, by different commentators, of this passage ; but it will be useless to compare their several merits; since both the measurements in question will be found to be no less inconsistent with the truth than they have been seen to be with each other. For the * The stade of Strabo has been estimated by Major Reiinell, in his admirable treatise on the itinerary stade of the Greeks, at 700 to a geographical degree ; and 930 stades will, on this computation, be equal to 100|® Roman miles, or 80- geographic miles. While the dimensions of the diameter, 1500 stades, will be equal to 162| Roman miles, or geographic.

■f" H Ss /AEyar, uqris tov /aev ituuXov araico-u EvvctKoaiwv rqiaxovra itov' rm sm rc/v fj,vov Sja/AET§ov HciflscKomajv' roaovrov ttov xai to tov irToptaror tiXoctos. — Lib. xvii.

p. 385.

f In the second book, however, the measurements given by Strabo are more consistent ; for he tells us that the circumference of the Greater Syrtis is (according to Eratosthenes) five thousand stadia, or 428„u geographic miles'’; and its depth, from the Hesperides to Automala, and the limits of the Cyrenaica, one thousand eight hundred, or 154i-„®iy geographic miles. Others, he adds, make the circumference four thousand stadia, ■342./’J’g geographic miles ; and the depth one thousand five hundred stadia, or 128-j'’gg geographic miles; the same, he says, as the breadth of the gulf at its moutli. — Lib. xi. p. 123.

® 4’he jjeogTa{)liif:al and Homan miles differ (says Shaw, on the authority of D'Anville) as GO is to 75|, that is, 60 geographical miles and 75J Roman miles are equal to one degree of a great circle. 'I'he Ron)an mile is consequently one-fifth less than a geographic mile. — Vol. i. p. .30.

*> At the rate of 700 stades to a degree.