[438] Strabo, XVII. 1.
[439] Diodorus Siculus, III. 43.
[440] Appian, Preface, § 10.—In 537, at Raphia, the Egyptian army amounted to 70,000 foot, 5,000 cavalry, and 73 elephants. (Polybius, V. 79; see also V. 65.)—Polybius, who gives us these details, adds that the pay of the officers was one mina (97 francs [£3 17s. 7d.]) a day. (XIII. ii.)
[441] Theocritus, Idylls, XVII. lines 90-102.—Athenæus (V. 36, p. 284) and Appian, Preface, § 10, give the details of this fleet.—Ptolemy IV. Philopator went so far as to construct a ship of forty ranges of rowers, which was 280 cubits long and 30 broad. (Athenæus, V. 37, p. 285.)
[442] Herodotus, IV. 199. The plateau of Barca, now desert, was then cultivated and well watered.
[443] The most important object of commerce of the Cyrenaica was the silphium, a plant the root of which sold for its weight in silver. A kind of milky gum was extracted from it, which served as a panacea with the apothecaries and as a seasoning in the kitchen. When, in 658, Cyrenaica was incorporated with the Roman Republic, the province paid an annual tribute in silphium. Thirty pounds of this juice, brought to Rome in 667, were regarded as a miracle; and when Cæsar, at the beginning of the civil war, seized upon the public treasury, he found in the treasury chest 1,500 pounds of silphium locked up with the gold and silver. (Pliny, XIX. 3.)
[444] Diodorus Siculus, III. 49.—Herodotus, IV. 169.—Athenæus, XV. 22, p. 487; 38, p. 514.—Strabo, XVII. iii. 712.—Pliny, Natural History, XVI. 33; XIX. 3.
[445] Pindar, Pythian Odes, IV. 2.—Athenæus, III. 58, p. 392.
[446] Diodorus Siculus, XVII. 49.
[447] Aristotle, Politics, VII. 2, § 10.