MERGE TO GYRENE. 559 Irasa, on which they built the city of Cyrene, about the third year, according to Eusebius, of the thirty-seventh Olympiad. We find little more worth relating of Battus, except, perhaps, that he lost the impediment in his speech, for which he had originally consulted the oracle, in the following extraordinary manner. As he wandered abroad one day unattended, a lion sprung very unexpectedly upon him ; and the cry of surprise and dismay which he uttered so terrified the monarch of the woods, that he fled with the utmost precipitation.

At the same moment Battus discovered that he had lost the infirmity under which he had laboured ; for the sudden exertion of voice just alluded to had taken it effectually away. After a reign of forty years, Battus was succeeded by his son Arcesilaus, of wdiom little further is known, than that he reigned for sixteen years.

During these two reigns, no accession appears to have been made to the numbers of the original colony ; under Battus the third, however, who was distinguished by the appellation of (the prosperous,) another migration took place from Greece ; and the lands already occupied not being sufficient for the accommodation of the new colonists, an inroad was made upon the territory of the Libyan inhabitants, and one of their chiefs, whom Herodotus calls Adicran, was deprived of a considerable part of his dominions.

The libyans applied for support to the Egyptians ; and Apries, who at that time reigned over Egypt, (and is supposed to be the Pharaoh Hophra of Scripture,) despatched a large army to their assistance. The Cyreneans, aware of the approach of their invaders, drew up their forces at Irasa, near the fountain called by Herodotus