[1122] Sall. Jug. 89. 6.
[1123] Ibid. 89. 5 Nam, praeter oppido propinqua, alia omnia vasta, inculta, egentia aquae, infesta serpentibus, quarum vis sicuti omnium ferarum inopia cibi acrior. Ad hoc natura serpentium, ipsa perniciosa, siti magis quam alia re accenditur. Tissot says (op. cit. ii. p. 669) that the solitudes which surround the oasis make a veritable "belt of sands and snakes" (cf. Florus iii. 1. 14 Anguibus harenisque vallatam).
[1124] Sal. Jug. 90. 1.
[1125] Aulus Manlius was sent with some light cohorts to protect the stores at Lares (Ibid. 90. 2). These stores were, therefore, not exhausted.
[1126] The Tana has often been identified with the Wäd Tina, but this identification would take Marius along the coast by Thenae—a course which he almost certainly did not follow. Tissot holds (Géogr. comp. i. p. 85) that Tana is only a generic Libyan name for a water-course. He thinks that the river in question is the Wäd-ed-Derb. (Ibid. p. 86).
[1127] This locus tumulosus (Sall. Jug. 91. 3) is identified by Tissot (op. cit. ii. p 669) with a spur of the Djebel Beni-Younès which dominates Kafsa on the northeast at the distance indicated by Sallust.
[1128] Ibid. 91. 7.
[1129] Sall. Jug. 92. 3.
[1130] Sallust omits all mention of these winter quarters. Such an omission does not prove that he is a bad military historian, but simply that he never meant his sketch to be a military history. But he has perhaps freed himself too completely from the annalistic methods of most Roman historians.
[1131] Sall. Jug. 92. 2.