Geography

​Bordering on Cyrenaica is the land that produces silphium and the Cyrenaic juice, which the silphium yields when it is cut; but it came near to being extinct when the barbarians invaded it because of some hostility and destroyed the roots of the plant. They are nomads. The famous Cyrenaean men were Aristippus the Socratic, who founded the Cyrenaic philosophy, and his daughter, Arete by name, who succeeded him in his school, and her son in turn who succeeded her, Aristippus, who was called Metrodidactus, and Anniceris, who is thought to have reformed the Cyrenaic sect and to have introduced in its place the Annicerean. Also Cyrenaeans are Callimachus and Eratosthenes, both honored by the kings of Egypt, the former a poet and at the same time a zealous student of grammar, the latter surpassing everyone else in these subjects as well as in philosophy and mathematics. Moreover, Carneades (who is acknowledged to be the best of the philosophers from the Academy) and Apollonius Cronus are from there, the master of Diodorus the dialectician, who was himself also called Cronus, because some transferred the epithet of the teacher to the pupil. After Apollonia is the remaining coast of the Cyrenaeans as far as Catabathmus, of two thousand two hundred stadia, not at all easy to sail along; for there are few harbors and anchorages, settlements and watering-places. Of the places most named in the voyage along the coast, there is Naustathmus, and Zephyrium which has an anchorage, and another Zephyrium, and the promontory Chersonesus which has a harbor; it lies opposite the [...] of Crete, at a sea distance of one thousand five hundred stadia to the south. Then a certain temple of Heracles, and above it the village Paliurus; then the harbor of Menelaus and the low promontory Ardanis which has an anchorage; then the Great Harbor, opposite which is situated the Chersonesus in Crete, leaving a sea distance of about two thousand stadia between them; for almost the whole of Crete, narrow and long, lies parallel and opposite to this coast. After the Great Harbor is another harbor, Plynus, and above it Tetrapyrgia. The place is called Catabathmus; as far as this is Cyrenaica. The rest, as far as Paraetonium and from there to Alexandria, has already been described by us in our account of Egypt.

​The country situated in the interior above the Syrtis and Cyrenaica is occupied by the Libyans, being very barren and dry; first the Nasamones, then the Psylli and some Gaetulians, then the Garamantes; and still more to the east, the Marmaridae, who border more closely on Cyrenaica and extend as far as Ammon. They say, then, that those who march from the innermost recess of the Great Syrtis, about Automala, towards the winter sunrise, arrive in four days. This place is similar to Ammon, producing dates and well-watered, and it lies above Cyrenaica to the south; for a distance of one hundred stadia the land is also covered with trees, but for another hundred it is only sown, and the land, because of the drought, produces edible roots. Above these is the land that produces silphium; then the uninhabited land and that of the Garamantes. The land that produces silphium is narrow, long, and very dry, its length to one going towards the east being about one thousand stadia, and its width three hundred or a little more, at least as far as is known. For we may conjecture that the whole land lying continuously on the same parallel of latitude is of this nature both in its atmosphere and the production of the plant; but since many deserts intervene, we do not know all the places. In like manner, the regions above Ammon and the oases as far as Ethiopia are unknown. Nor could we tell the boundaries either of Ethiopia or of Libya, nor even clearly those of the land near Egypt, much less those of the land near the ocean.