Here commences the second division[3363] of Africa properly so called. Those who inhabit Byzacium have the name of Libyphœnices[3364]. Byzacium is the name of a district which is 250 miles in circumference, and is remarkable for its extreme fertility, as the ground returns the seed sown by the husbandman with interest a hundred-fold[3365]. Here are the free towns of Leptis[3366], Adrumetum[3367], Ruspina[3368], and Thapsus[3369]; and then Thenæ[3370], Macomades[3371], Tacape[3372], and Sabrata[3373] which touches on the Lesser Syrtis; to which spot, from the Ampsaga, the length of Numidia and Africa is 580 miles, and the breadth, so far as it has been ascertained, 200. That portion which we have called Africa is divided into two provinces, the Old and the New; these are separated by a dyke which was made by order of the second Scipio Africanus[3374] and the kings[3375], and extended to Thenæ, which town is distant from Carthage 216 miles. CHAP. 4.—THE SYRTES. A third Gulf is divided into two smaller ones, those of the two Syrtes[3376], which are rendered perilous by the shallows of their quicksands and the ebb and flow of the sea. Polybius states the distance from Carthage to the Lesser Syrtis, the one which is nearest to it, to be 300 miles. The inlet to it he also states to be 100 miles across, and its circumference 300. There is also a way[3377] to it by land, to find which we must employ the guidance of the stars and cross deserts which present nothing but sand and serpents. After passing these we come to forests filled with vast multitudes of wild beasts and elephants, then desert wastes[3378], and beyond them the Garamantes[3379], distant twelve days’ journey from the Augylæ[3380]. Above the Garamantes was formerly the nation of the Psylli[3381], and above them again the Lake of Lycomedes[3382], surrounded with deserts. The Augylæ themselves are situate almost midway between Æthiopia which faces the west[3383], and the region which lies between[3384] the two Syrtes, at an equal distance from both. The distance along the coast that lies between the two Syrtes is 250 miles. On it are found the city of Œa[3385], the river Cinyps[3386], and the country of that name, the towns of Neapolis[3387], Graphara[3388], and Abrotonum[3389], and the second, surnamed the Greater, Leptis[3390].