260 STRABO. [CHAP. XII.
and then redeemed for himself, by Herod the Great. To judge
from the accounts of Palestine which are given by Pliny and
Tacitus, as well as by Strabo, the balsam-tree and the Dead Sea
seem to have been the objects in that country which chiefly at-
tracted the attention of the Roman world in ancient times. The
description of Arabia, with which this part of the work concludes,
is as complete as the knowledge of that age allowed, and embodies
the additional information on the subject which Agatharchides
had collected. Strabo also relates the events of the campaign
which Aelius Callus prosecuted in that country at the command
of Augustus, but in respect of geography that expedition did not
add much to what was already known.
The last book of the Geography is devoted to Africa, and the
larger portion of it is occupied with an account of
Egypt and
the Rest of Egypt, of which country, as we have seen, Strabo
Afnca* had personal knowledge. He commences with a
description of Alexandria, which is the most elaborate notice of any
city that is found in his work1—an honour which it fully deserved
from its importance as a commercial, geographical, and scientific
centre. The other famous places in Egypt are briefly depicted, in
accordance with the author's rule of confining his work within the
limits which he originally assigned to it; but his narrative in these
parts is sometimes enlivened by personal experiences, such as his
inspection of the bull Apis at Memphis2, his witnessing the feeding
of the sacred crocodile at Arsinoe3, and his own trepidation, when
being ferried across on a frail raft to the island of Philae4. Con-
cerning the course of the Nile to the southward of that place he is
able to furnish some fresh information from the expedition of
C Petronius in Aethiopia5. The remainder of Africa is some-
what briefly treated, and Strabo was not aware of the marked
projection formed by the northern coast near Carthage opposite
Sicily. About Mauretania he might have had more to say, if he
had used the treatise of his contemporary Juba, but with that
work he does not seem to have been acquainted.
1 17. i. 6—io, 13. 217. i, 31. s 17. i. 38.
4 J7-1. 50- 5 I?- i- 54-