[Footnote 7: Ed io inclino tanto più a credere quest’ ampia depressione di suolo giungere fino al gran deserto, poichè per quanto posso congetturare dal cammino fatto non sarebbe improbabile che l’estremità del golfo si prolungasse assai più a mezzodì di quel che trovasi nelle migliori carte, nelle quali non saprei sopra qual fondamento è stata stabilita. È per me di qualche peso la relazione del Cap. Lautier, il quale non navigò certamente oltre il 30° 27′ 11″ di latitudine, ma da questo punto non iscoprì il fondo del golfo, nè v’ era apparenza di prossimità al continente. Ho ferma credenza che migliori osservazioni confermeranno questa mia congettura.—(p. 94.)] [Footnote 8: 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.] [Footnote 9: Bell. Jugurth. (79.)] [Footnote 10: Major Rennell has observed on this subject—“At the date of Hannibal’s expedition to Italy, B. C. 217, the Carthaginian empire extended eastward to the Philænean altars, which stood at the south-east extremity of the Greater Syrtis. The story of the Philæni, as it is told, is in some points very improbable. It is said that the parties set out from their respective capitals, Carthage and Cyrene, and met at the place where the altars afterwards stood. Now the altars were situated at about seven-ninths of the way from Carthage towards Cyrene; and the deception would have been too gross had it been pretended that the Carthaginian party had travelled seven parts in the nine, while the Cyrenean party had travelled no more than two such parts of the way. Would either party have trusted the other with the adjustment of the time of setting out? Perhaps they mutually set out at the opposite extremes of the territory in dispute, and not from their respective capitals.”] [Footnote 11: That is, if we may read the passage in the third book of Strabo, quoted above, in the sense which we imagine he intended; if not, he contradicts himself.]