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EVESPERIDES (Ancient city) KYRINAIKI
Lathon (Lathon, Strab. xvii. p. 836, where the vulgar reading is Ladon;
comp. xiv. p. 647, where he calls it Lethaios; Ptol. iv. 4. § 4; Lethon, Ptol.
Euerg. ap Ath. ii. p. 71; Fluvius Lethon, Plin. v. 5; Solin. 27; Lethes Amnis,
Lucan ix.355), a river of the Hesperidae or Hesperitae, in Cyrenaica. It rose
in the Herculis Arenae, and fell into the sea a little N. of the city of Hesperides
or Berenice: Strabo connects it with the harbour of the city (limen Hesperidon:
that there is not the slightest reason for altering the reading, as Groskurd and
others do, into limne, will presently appear); and Scylax (p. 110, Gronov.) mentions
the river, which he calls Ecceius (Ekkeios), as in close proximity with the city
and habour of Hesperides. Pliny expressly states that the river was not far from
the city, and places on or near it a sacred grove, which was supposed to represent
the Gardens of the Hesperides (Plin. v. 5: nec procul ante oppidum fluvius Lethon,
lucus sacer, ubi Hesperidum horti memorantur). Athenaeus quotes from a work of
Ptolemy Euergetes praises of its fine pike and eels, somewhat inconsistent, especially
in the mouth of a luxurious king of Egypt, with the mythical sound of the name.
That name is, in fact, plain Doric Greek, descriptive of the character of the
river, like our English Mole. So well does it deserve the name, that it escaped
the notice of commentators and geographers, till it was discovered by Beechey,
as it still flows concealed from such scholars as depend on vague guesses in place
of an accurate knowledge of the localities. Thus the laborious, but often most
inaccurate, compiler Forbiger, while taking on himself to correct Strabo's exact
account, tells us that the river and lake (Strabo's harbour) have now entirely
vanished ; and yet, a few lines down, he refers to a passage of Beechey's work
within a very few pages of the place where the river itself is actually described!
(Forbiger, Handbuch der alten Geographie, vol. ii. p. 828, note.)
The researches made in Beechey's expedition give the following results:
- East of the headland on which stands the ruins of Hesperides or Berenice (now
Bengazi) is a small lake, which communicates with the harbour of the city, and
has its water of course salt. The water of the lake varies greatly in quantity,
according to the season of the year; and is nearly dried up in summer. There are
strong grounds to believe that its waters were more abundant, and its communication
with the harbour more perfect, in ancient times than at present. On the margin
of the lake is a spot of rising ground, nearly insulated in winter, on which are
the remains of ancient buildings. East of this lake again, and only a few yards
from its margin, there gushes forth an abundant spring of fresh water, which empties
itfelf into the lake, running along a channel of inconsiderable breadth, bordered
with reeds and rushes, and might be mistaken by a common observer for an inroad
of the lake into the sandy soil which bounds it. Moreover, this is the only stream
which empties itself into the lake; and indeed the only one found on that part
of the coast of Cyrenaica. Now, even without searching further, it is evident
how well all this answers to the description of Strabo (xvii. p. 836) : - There
is a promontory called Pseudopenias, on which Berenice is situated, beside a certain
Lake of Tritonis (para limnen tina Tritoniada), in which there is generally (malista)
a little island, and a temple of Aphrodite upon it: but there is (or it is) also
the Harbour of Hesperides, and the river Lathon falls into it. It is now evident
how much the sense of the description would be impaired by reading limne for limen
in the last clause; and it matters but little whether Strabo speaks of the river
as falling into the harbour because it fell into the lake which communicated with
the harbour, or whether he means that the lake, which he calls that of Tritonis,
was actually the harbour (that is, an inner harbour) of the city. But the little
stream which falls into the lake is not the only representative of the river Lathon.
Further to the east, in one of the subterranean caves which abound in the neighbourhood
of Bengazi, Beechy found a large body of fresh water, losing itself in the bowels
of tile earth; and the Bey of Bengazi affirmed that he had tracked its subterraneous
course till he doubted the safety of proceeding further, and that he had found
it as much as 30 feet deep. That the stream thus lost in the earth is the same
which reappears in the spring on the margin of the lake, is extremely probable;
but whether it be so in fact, or not, we can hardly doubt that the ancient Greeks
would imagine the connection to exist. (Beechey, Proceedings, &c. pp. 326,
foll.; Barth, Wanderungen, &c. 387.)
This text is from: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) (ed. William Smith, LLD). Cited August 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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