The extent of that portion of Syria which was granted to the Hebrew nation has been variously estimated. On the authority of Hecataeus, a native of Abdera, who is quoted by Josephus, the limits of the territory possessed by the Jews are fixed at three millions of acres, supposing the _aroura_ of the Greeks to correspond to the denomination of English measure just specified. Proceeding on this ground, the Abbé Fleury and other writers have undertaken to prove that the quantity of land mentioned by Hecataeus would maintain only three millions three hundred and seventy-five thousand men,--a computation which is liable to many objections, and has not therefore been generally received. It is obvious, for instance, that the Abderite, who lived in the reign of Alexander the Great, and is said to have afterward attached himself to the person of the first Grecian king of Egypt, described the country of the Jews as he saw it, under the dominion of the Syrian princes of the Macedonian line. He accordingly beheld only the inheritance of the two tribes which had returned from the Babylonian captivity, and of consequence confined his estimates to the provinces that they were permitted to enjoy; taking no account of those extensive districts that formerly belonged to the Ten Tribes of Israel, and which, in his days, were in the hands of that mixed race of men who were descended from the Assyrian colonists whom Shalmaneser placed in their room.[12] Confiding in the greater accuracy of Spanheim, Reland, and Lowman, we are inclined to compute the Hebrew territory at about fifteen millions of acres; assuming, with these writers, that the true boundaries of the Promised Land were, Mount Libanus on the north, the Wilderness of Arabia on the south, and the Syrian Desert on the east. On the west some of the tribes extended their possessions to the very waters of the Great Sea, though on other parts they found their boundary restricted by the lands of the Philistines, whose rich domains comprehended the low lands and strong cities which stretched along the shore. It has been calculated by Spanheim, that the remotest points of the Holy Land, as possessed by King David, were situated at the distance of three degrees of latitude, and as many degrees of longitude, including in all about twenty-six thousand square miles.[13]