It appears to have been from Berenice, the daughter of Magas, who was married to Ptolemy Philadelphus, that the city of Hesperis changed its ancient name into that which afterwards distinguished it[30]. But the name of Berenicidæ, which seems to have been conferred upon the inhabitants of this part of the Cyrenaica, was not by any means generally adopted; for we find that these people continued notwithstanding to be called by their former appellation of Hesperides. It is, however, somewhat singular that Pomponius Mela, who flourished towards the middle of the first century, and nearly a hundred years after the extinction of the dynasty of the Lagides, should have mentioned this city under its ancient name of Hesperis only; while he gives its Ptolemaic name, Arsinoe, to Teuchira, and distinguishes the port of Barca by its appellation of Ptolemais[31]. Yet the name of Berenice continued to be used by other writers long after the age of Mela; and Pliny, who flourished nearly at the same time with this geographer, mentions the city of the Hesperides by that title. It is probable that a name of such poetical celebrity as that which gave place to Berenice was not easily laid aside by the lovers of literature; and we find that Ptolemy thought it necessary, an hundred years after Mela, to add, when he speaks of the city of Berenice, that it was the same with that of Hesperis, or, as he writes it, Hesperides[32]; from which we may infer that the ancient name of the place still continued to be better known than the modern one. But alas for the glories of Hesperis and Berenice! both names have passed away from the scene of their renown; and the present inhabitants of the miserable dirty village, (for we can scarcely call it a town,) which has reared itself on the ruins of these cities, have no idea that Bengazi did not always occupy the place which it has usurped on the soil of the Hesperides[33]. The Arab who now gathers his corn, or his fruit, in some one, perhaps, of those gardens so celebrated in the annals of antiquity, dreams of nothing whatever connected with it beyond the profits which he hopes from its produce. He knows nothing of the stream or the properties of the Lethe; and the powerful influence of the River of Oblivion seems to have been so often, and so successfully exerted, as to have drowned at length even the recollection of itself[34]. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: On these terraces barley and grass are frequently seen growing, and goats feeding very contentedly.] [Footnote 2: This idea is so strongly rooted in Mahometans of all classes and descriptions, as to have called forth the animadversions of writers of their own persuasion. We find the following remarks on the subject, in the Account of Egypt by Abd-Allatif, which we give in the French version of Silvestre de Lacy.