"The goddess implores the vengeance of Jupiter against the peasants of Libya, who refused her water, and the peasants, already metamorphosed, some half, and others entirely, into frogs and tortoises, are placed on the edge of the different tablets, and throw forth water upon Latona in every direction, thus forming liquid arches of the most beautiful effect."

But the most important event in the administration of Count Molé was the extension of the Algerian colony to the limits of the ancient Libya,so long the granary of imperial Rome, and which once could boast of twenty millions of people.

Although not the earliest settlement of the Phoenicians in this region, and originally perhaps a dependency of the adjoining Utica, the oldest of the Phoenician towns in Libya, it soon outstripped its neighbours and even the motherland through the incomparable advantages of its situation and the energetic activity of its inhabitants.

The stream of Hellenic migration was pouring ceaselessly towards the west: it had already dislodged the Phoenicians from Greece proper and Italy, and it was preparing to supplant them also in Sicily, in Spain, and even in Libya itself.

Carthage was no longer a mere mercantile city: it aimed at the dominion of Libya and of a part of the Mediterranean, because it could not avoid doing so.

Phoenician civilization prevailed in Libya just as Greek civilization prevailed in Asia Minor and Syria after the campaigns of Alexander, although not with the same intensity.

The epoch, at which this transformation of Carthage into the capital of Libya took place, admits the less of being determined, because the change doubtless took place gradually.

But the empire of Libya was only half of the power of Carthage; its maritime and colonial dominion had acquired, during the same period, a not less powerful development.

In like manner the Carthaginians already at the end of the second century of Rome established themselves in Sardinia, which was utilized by them precisely in the same way as Libya.

The rich resources of the country in horses, oxen, sheep, and goats, in which Libya by reason of its Nomad economy perhaps excelled at that time, as Polybius testifies, all other lands of the earth, were of great advantage to the Carthaginians.

To these were added the forces of the more or less dependent tribes of Libya and Spain and the famous slingers of the Baleares, who seem to have held an intermediate position between allied contingents and mercenary troops; and finally, in case of need, the hired soldiery enlisted abroad.

That Rome could only be seriously attacked in Italy, and Carthage only in Libya, no one could fail to see; as little could any one fail to perceive that Carthage could not in the long run escape from such an attack.

When Agathocles had shown the way thither, a Roman general could follow the same course; and while in Italy the entrance of an invading army simply began the war, the same event in Libya put an end to it by converting it into a siege, in which, unless special accidents should intervene, even the most obstinate and heroic courage must finally succumb.

[Footnote 1: Libya.

[Footnote 6: Of Libya.]

[Footnote 7: The purport of this is: If Euphemos had taken the clod safely home to Tainaros in Lakonia, then his great-grandsons with emigrants from other Peloponnesian powers would have planted a colony in Libya.

But since the clod had fallen into the sea and would be washed up on the shore of the island of Thera, it was necessary that Euphemos' descendants should first colonize Thera, and then, but not till the seventeenth generation, proceed, under Battos, to found the colony of Kyrene in Libya.]

Among forty charioteers who fell thou didst with soul undaunted bring thy car unhurt, and hast now come back from the glorious games unto the plain of Libya and the city of thy sires.

And now shall queenly Libya of broad meadow-lands well-pleased receive for thee within a golden house thy glorious bride, and there make gift to her of a portion in the land, to be an inhabiter thereof with herself, neither shall it be lacking in tribute of plants bearing fruit after all kinds, neither a stranger to the beasts of chase.

That same day made accomplishment of the matter, and in a golden chamber of Libya they lay together; where now she haunteth a city excellent in beauty and glorious in the games.

[Footnote 2: I. e. Libya, the continent which we now call Africa.]

" "Thou wadest into a sea itself of woes; In Libya and Aegean each man knows Of thirty not three ships are cast away, But on this rock not one escapes, I say.

Africa and Numidia, Asia and Greece with Epirus, the Dalmatian and Macedonian territories, Sicily, Crete, and Libya adjacent to Cyrene, Bithynia with the adjoining Pontus, Sardinia and Baetica, were consequently held to belong to the people and the senate.

33 Iaman learnt from afar of the approach of my expedition; he fled beyond Egypt toward Libya (Meluhhi), and no one ever saw any further trace of him.

35 The King of Libya lives in the middle of the desert, in an inaccessible place, at (a month's) journey.