[3]Many pointed observations are recorded of Aristippus the elder, who appears to have possessed a very lively wit. He asked a certain person, who reproached him for having given a sumptuous entertainment—whether he would not have been equally hospitable if it would only have cost him three oboli? When the other replied in the affirmative, Aristippus observed, “It is you then, I find, who are fond of money, and not I of pleasure.” Dionysius once sent him three beautiful women, from which the philosopher was desired to select whichever pleased him most; but Aristippus retained them all three; observing that “Paris had greatly suffered by preferring one goddess to another.” When some one inquired what Aristippus would expect for the education of his son, he answered five hundred drachmas. “I can buy a slave,” replied the other, “for that money.” “Do so,” said Aristippus, “and then you will have two.”
[4]The name of Bĭrāsa will naturally suggest a resemblance between it and Irāsa, the country which is mentioned by Herodotus as that to which the Greeks were conducted by the natives of Libya. We do not mean to infer, that the place first mentioned has any other connexion with the territory upon which Cyrene was erected, than that which we are going to suggest; but if the affinity of the Arabic and Hebrew, or Chaldee, to the old Phœnician, or Samaritan language, (an early dialect of the Hebrew,) be really so great as is generally allowed, the two words in question may bear the same meaning without any forced application. The word rās in Arabic, and in Hebrew, signifies a head; and the term is constantly applied by the Arabs to high and mountainous ground, whether inland or on the coast: land on the summit of a mountain may therefore be said to be—bi-rās—upon the head, or high ground; and bi-rās-a would signify, in Arabic, as it does in the case of the territory in question—a tract of land on the upper part of a range of hills—and might be applied without any impropriety to a similar tract of land of whatever extent. It is not, perhaps, improbable that rās had the same meaning among the Libyan tribes, (whom we may suppose to have spoken some dialect of the old Phœnician,) as it bears in Arabic and Hebrew; and that the particle bi or be, was at the same time used by the Libyans, in the sense which belongs to it in those languages. Irāsa might then be supposed to mean a tract of table land; for the loss of the letter b is of little importance, considering that the word comes through a Greek medium; and as the Greeks in the case alluded to were conducted from the low ground to the high, such an application is far from improbable. It is not, however, necessary for this application to insist upon the omission of the b; for the i in Irāsa might well be a contraction of the article el or il, signifying the, and I-rāsa be pronounced for el-rāsa, which is consistent with the usual pronunciation of Arabic and other Oriental languages. The whole would then be taken for a part; and the country which the Greeks were recommended to inhabit, would be termed—the summit of the mountain—and in the Libyan dialect (let us suppose) Ir’rāsa, or Er’-rāsa.
[5]We have not been able to publish on this occasion (as we believe we have already stated) more than a limited number of plates; so that several to which we have referred have been unavoidably omitted. Some of the drawings, however, will appear in another publication, with others made in Egypt and Nubia; and in that we shall hope to find means of introducing the greater part of what has been omitted.
[6]The accuracy to which this method of computing distance may be brought, with proper attention, will be seen on referring to the Table, p. xliv. in the Appendix.
APPENDIX.
APPENDIX.
OBSERVATIONS ON THE PORTS AND HARBOURS FROM TRIPOLY TO DERNA, IN THEIR ACTUAL CONDITION.
In addition to what we have already observed with respect to the shores of the Syrtis and Cyrenaica, we have thought it necessary to subjoin the following short description of them, and of the supplies that ships may expect to meet with at the different places situated along the coast from Tripoli to Derna. The several places therein alluded to, will be found in the accompanying chart, which has been constructed from a succession of angles, carried on along the coast, assisted by astronomical observations, and chronometrical measurements, between three distant points, whose positions were well determined by Captain W. H. Smyth, R.N.