the beach are constructed with larger stones than are usually employed
in the Syrtis, and, from what we could perceive of them, for
the tops only appear above the sand, have been built with more than
common attention to workmanship and regularity. Traces of
building may also be observed for nearly a mile from the Mersa to
the eastward, and the whole place is strewed with fragments of pottery.
Several stone troughs are lying on the beach, some of them
in an unfinished state ; they do not appear to have been intended
for sarcophagi, as their lengths vary from five to eight feet ; while
their breadth remains nearly the same, or from fifteen to eighteen
inches. Had our time and means allowed it we should have’remained
a few days to excavate at Mersa Zaffran, and.we had marked it
as one of the places to be examined on our return : there is little to
remove but sand, and it is by no means improbable that the results
of excavation at this place would be interesting. As Mersa Zaffran
appears to have, been used as a port by the ancients, and is the
first which occurs after the marsh, we may fairly consider it as that
mentioned by Strabo with Aspis; .and the remains at Zaffran are
probably those of Aspis itself, which we may conclude to have been
a military post from the nature of the buildings which are found
there ; although the word rovos applied to it by Strabo, does not
necessarily imply any idea of fortification. No place worth selecting
for any advantages which it might afford could, however, have been
secure without some fortification; and accordingly we find every
desirable position in the Syrtis provided with forts for its defence,
which ensured, at once, the possession of the local advantages and a
communication with the adjacent inhabited places.
I t is difficult to fix any precise date to these buildings, but we
may perhaps conclude, with some appearance of reason, that the
greater number of them were erected by the Romans under the
emperors, who possessed, at various times, the whole of the north
coast of Africa, and kept open an extensive communication along
the shores of the Mediterranean, as well as with some parts of the
inferior *. The quadrangular form of these structures is the same
as that used by the Romans in their stations and encampments ; and
the small number of troops which was allotted by the empire for the
defence of Africa, made it peculiarly necessary that their garrisons
should be well intrenched f. I t has been calculated that a square of
seven hundred yards was sufficient, according to the Roman method
of encampment, for containing a body of twenty thousand men ; and
a square of one hundred feet would, at that rate, suffice for the accommodation
of nine hundred and fifty. The habitable parts of the forts
above mentioned very rarely exceeded a square of that size, and this
portion of the structure, in by far the greater number of them, seldom
# The-tower of Euphrantas is however stated to have been a boundary fort under
thé Ptolemies; and the fortress of Automala, at the bottom of the gulf, is mentioned
by. Diodorus to have been in existence before the occupation of Cyrene by the first of
those princes.—See Strabo, lib. 17, and Diod., lib. 20.
•f* “ With regard to Egypt, Africa, and, Spain, (says Gibbon, in describing the
distribution of the Roman foices,) as they , were far removed from, any important
scene of war, a single legion maintained the domestic tranquillity of these great provinces.”
“ We may compute (says the same writer) that the legion, which was itself a
body of six thousand eight hundred and thirty-one Romans, m ight, with its atteridant
auxiliaries, amount to about twelve thousand five hundred men.”