266 GEOGRAPHY FROM AUGUSTUS TO TRAJAN. [CHAP.

"TheLacus Asphaltites produces only bitumen, from which
also it receives its name. The bodies of animals

Thft TJftfld Sft&

float on its surface, and this is true even of bulls
and camels ; hence the story has arisen that nothing can sink in
it. Its length is more than a hundred miles, its breadth where it
is widest is seventy-five, where it is narrowest, six miles. To the
east of it lies Arabia of the nomads, towards the south Machaerus,
which in former days was the most important stronghold in Judaea
after Jerusalem. On that side too there is a warm spring with
medicinal qualities, the name of which, Callirrhoe or the Fair
Stream, proclaims the celebrity of its waters.

"On its western side, beyond the unhealthy strip of shore, dwell
the Esseni, a solitary people, the strangest among

The Essenes. ..... - , i i /• i

the inhabitants of the world, for there are no women
among them, and they have abjured all sexual pleasure, and possess
no money, but abide in the palm-groves. Day by day the number
of these refugees is renewed, being largely swelled by the accession
of those whom the vicissitudes of fortune drive, weary of life, to
adopt their usages. In this way, marvellous though it seems, a
race exists perpetually in which no one is born, for it is propa-
gated by other men's dissatisfaction with life."1

These and other notices of Palestine and Syria which we find
in Pliny may well have been due to his intimacy with Vespasian
p^ and Titus. He remarks also on the unique features

of Palmyra — the fertility of its soil and its abundant
fountains, its position in the midst of the sandy desert, as if it had
been naturally set apart from the rest of the world, and its success
in maintaining its independence on the confines of the two mighty
empires of Rome and Parthia, though constantly exposed to
danger owing to their quarrels3. Proceeding further towards the
east, we find him affirming, on the authority of emissaries of
Pompey at the time of his campaign against the Albani, the
existence of an overland trade-route from India to Europe by
way of the Oxus, the Caspian, and the Black Sea, which had
previously been asserted by Strabo on the .strength of the testi-
mony of Patrocles8. He describes, too, the site of Margiana

1 ff. JVM 5. 71—3. 2 im., 5. 88.
8 /£&., 6. 52; Strabo, n. 7. 3.