•258 JOURNEY FROM of the diameter of the gulf, they might just as well have been taken for the road-distance between Mesurata and Bengazi; the measurements which we find in the Itinerary of Antoninus, of the distance between Leptis Magna and Berenice, come nearer to the actual road-distance between these places, by one hundred and thirty Roman miles, than that which is obtained by adding the seventy-three miles between Lebida and Mesurata to the circumference of the gulf given by Pliny ; for the whole distance of the Itinerary from Leptis to Berenice is not estimated at more than five hundred and sixty-eight Roman miles, while those above mentioned being added together would make no less than six hundred and ninety-eight. So that the circumference of the gulf which may be deduced from the Itinerary differs only from the actual circuit by road-distance in thirty-seven Roman miles, or twenty-nine and a half geographic.

But instead of being surprized at the differences which obtain between the measurements which have descended to us from the ancients, we ought rather, perhaps, to wonder that they do not differ even more than they are usually found to do from each other. It is true that abundant materials were furnished to the early geographers, by the numerous military and naval expeditions which enterprizing or ambitious states had fitted out for the purposes of conquest or discovery* ; but * Sesostris is said to have recorded his march in maps, and to have given copies of them not only to the Egyptians, but to the remote and uninformed inhabitants of Scythia, who viewed them with the greatest astonishment. The expeditions of Alexander furnished the materials for an interesting survey, a copy of which was given to Patroclus the geographer; it was from the work of Patroclus that Eratosthenes derived his principal materials in constructing the Oriental part of his map of the world, and it is frequently quoted both by Strabo and Pliny.

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