Note 8 — Chapter IX

For Strabo tells us (lib. iii. p. 171), in alluding to the custom practised by the ancients, of erecting columns on particular occasions, that the monuments raised to the memory of the Philæni were situated nearly midway in the Syrtis—at least, such is the sense in which we must take this passage, to make it at all consistent with the position allotted to the Philænean altars in the seventeenth book. Although we may certainly read in the passage we are about to quote, above mentioned, “midway in the country between the Syrtes”—for the Syrtes are here mentioned in the plural—and this circumstance would otherwise rather tend to confirm the position of the altars in the table of Peutinger (as mentioned by Cellarius, lib. iv. cap. 3, sec. 3.) which is between the two Gulfs of Syrtis. “At, in Peutingeriana tabula vetusta, (says Cellarius) redactæ hæ aræ sunt fere ad minorem Syrtim, ut dubitare possis de situ et positione ex tot auctoribus jam descripta.” Strabo’s words are—και ὁι φιλαινων λεγομενοι βωμοι, κατα μεσην, που, την μεταξυ των Συρτεων γην.