Libanius

“ Alexandria, Athens, Antioch, and Neapolis are to be the centres of the outbreak. The great Libanius is not a man of action, and even he approves of our scheme. No less a man than Florentin has undertaken to recruit for our cause among the heathen officers in the army. Messala, and the great Gothic captains Fraiut and Generid are ready to fight for the old gods. Our army will not lack leaders. ”

“ He had now undertaken an important and difficult war; and the anxiety of the event rendered him still more attentive to observe and register the most trifling presages, from which, according to the rules of divination, any knowledge of futurity could be derived. 32 He informed Libanius of his progress as far as Hierapolis, by an elegant epistle, 33 which displays the facility of his genius, and his tender friendship for the sophist of Antioch. ”

“ If he had stretched as far as the Euphrates the claims of his ambition, he might have been secure, says Libanius, of not meeting with a refusal. If he had fixed, as the boundary of Persia, the Orontes, the Cydnus, the Sangarius, or even the Thracian Bosphorus, flatterers would not have been wanting in the court of Jovian to convince the timid monarch, that his remaining provinces would still afford the most ample gratifications of power and luxury. ”

“ Libanus grieved for him, and all the trees of the field trembled.
16 I shook the nations with the sound of his fall, when I brought him down to hell with them that descend into the pit: and all the trees of pleasure, the choice and best in Libanus, all that were moistened with waters, were comforted in the lowest parts of the earth.
17 For they also shall go down with him to hell to them that are slain by the sword: and the arm of every one shall sit down under his shadow in the midst of the nations.
18 To whom art thou like, O thou that art famous and lofty among the trees of pleasure? ”

“ Richard and I and Charley Drake made another pleasant journey exploring the Anti-Libanus. Everybody thinks, even professional geographers, if you speak of the Anti-Libanus, that you are going over trodden ground, filling up details upon the broad outlines traced by other people; but it is very far from being the case. Now the best maps only show a long conventional caterpillar, flanked by acidulated drops, and seamed with a cobweb of drainage. They never name a valley north-east of Zebedáni, nor a summit, except Jebel el Halímah, which is not its name. ”

“ IN Libyssa there lately lived one, called Alexander Libanus, who, in his younger years, appeared to have great zeal for truth and piety, he began to show his great regard for truth and piety, when he was about fourteen years of age, and continued very godly till he was arrived at twenty-one years of age, and then he began to be drawn off by worldly pleasures. He was very much drawn off by the female sex, which had a tendency to deprive him of all his money, and, being very much disquieted, he went one day into a very large wood, not far from the place where he used to resort. ”

“ Well indeed did Liban call it the Plain of Fire, for a breath of fire is in the air for leagues and leagues around. On the lake where the Sidhe dwell the fishers row by and see nothing, or, mayhap, a flicker of phantasmal trees around the dun. These trees are rooted in a buried star beneath the earth; when its heart pulsates they shine like gold, aye, and are fruited with ruby lights. Indeed this Labraid is one of the Gods. I saw him come through the flaming rivers of the underworld. He was filled with the radiance. ”

“ A magic well had sprung up in the plain, and not being properly looked after by the woman in charge of it, its waters burst forth over the plain, drowning Ecca and nearly all his family. Liban, although swept away like the others, was not drowned. She lived for a whole year, with her lap-dog, in a chamber beneath the lake, and God protected her from the water. At the end of that time she was weary, and when she saw the speckled salmon swimming and playing all round her, she prayed to be changed into a salmon that she might swim with the others through the green, salt sea. ”

“ We now determined the forms and bearings of the Cedar Block, the true apex of the Libanus. We then went to the unknown and dangerous region called Tulúl el Safá, the Hillocks of the Safá district, a mass of volcanic cones lying east of the Damascus swamps called lakes. Then we explored the northern Anti-Libanus, a region which is innocent of tourists and traveller, and appears a blank of mountains upon the best maps. Of my fellow-traveller Charley Drake I can only say that every one knows his public worth. ”

“ When we came to the first height,{411} which is divided from the principal chain by a shallow valley, we had suddenly an indescribably beautiful and astonishing view over the whole of the mountain range of Libanon, which rose up before us, its whole length and down a considerable distance, covered with fresh shining snow; a true Alpine country in its most magnificent features, which towers majestically over this land blessed with eternal spring, but now so shamefully oppressed by its Turkish enemies. ”

“ It will become another Egypt, with the advantages of a superior climate, and far nobler races of men. Time was when I dreamt of the Libanus as my future pied à terre. When weary with warfare and wander, one could repose in peace and comfortable ease. I thought of pitching a tent for life on Mount Lebanon, whose raki and tobacco are of the best, whose Vino d'oro is compared with the best, whose winter climate is like an English summer, whose views are lovely, a place at the same time near and far from society—it was riant in the extreme ”

“ With hands clasped under her chin she gazed into the vacancies with eyes of far-away reflection and longing. There was something pathetic in the intensity and wistfulness of the lonely figures. She turned and rose to meet them, a smile of rare tenderness lighting up her face as she saw Liban. The dim glow of a single lamp but half revealed the youthful figure, the pale, beautiful face, out of which the sun-colours had faded. Her hair of raven hue was gathered in massy coils over her head and fastened there by a spiral torque of gleaming gold. ”

“ These are all the Libyans whom we can name, and of their kings the most part cared nothing for the king of the Medes at the time of which I write, nor do they care for him now. I have thus much further to say of this country: four nations and no more, as far as our knowledge serves, inhabit it, whereof two are aboriginal and two are not; the Libyans in the north and the Ethiopians in the south of Libya are aboriginal, the Phoenicians and Greeks are later settlers. ”

“ If steel is employed, the veins shrink up. The sap is used by physicians. Libanus is the principal mountain, and has, strange to say, amidst these burning heats, a summit shaded with trees and never deserted by its snows. ”

“ After all these exotics brought from our plantations, answering to the name of cedar, I should esteem that of the Vermuda, little inferior, if not superior, to the noblest Libanon, and next, that of Carolina for its many uses, and lasting.
Having spoken of their several species, we come now to the culture, best rais’d from the seeds, since it would be difficult to receive any store from abroad: To begin with that of M. Libanus; Those which seem of the greatest antiquity, are indeed majestical, extending the boughs and branches, with their cones sursum spectantia, as by most we are told ”

“ It must be known that all the northern seacoast of Libya—from Egypt as far as the promontory of Soloeis, which is the end of Libya—is inhabited through its whole length by Libyans, many tribes of them, except the part held by Greeks and Phoenicians; the region of Libya above the sea and the men of the seacoast is infested by wild beasts; and farther inland than the wild-beast country all is sand, exceeding waterless and wholly desert. ”

“ Above these nomadic tribes, inland, Libya abounds in wild beasts; beyond the wild-beast tract is a ridge of sand, stretching from the Egyptian Thebes to the columns of Hercules. At intervals of a ten days' journey in this ridge, there are pieces of salt in large lumps on hills; and at the top of each hill, from the midst of the salt, cool, sweet water gushes up. The first people you come to after a ten days' journey from Thebes, are the Ammonians, who have a temple resembling that of Theban Jupiter. For the image of Jupiter at Thebes has the head of a ram. ”

“ On the north, opposed to the vast population of Asia Minor, it was protected by the double range of the Libanus and Antilibanus, a region of forests and defiles at all seasons almost impassable to chariots and cavalry, and during winter barred up with torrents and snows. The whole frontier to the east and south was a wall of mountain rising from a desert—a durable barrier over which no enemy, exhausted by the privations of an Asiatic march, could force their way against a brave army waiting fresh within its own confines. ”

“ For Libya is inhabited by many and various races, and of these but very few were subjects of the Persian king, while by far the larger number held Darius in no manner of respect.
The Libyans dwell in the order which I will now describe. Beginning on the side of Egypt, the first Libyans are the Adyrmachidae These people have, in most points, the same customs as the Egyptians, but use the costume of the Libyans. Their women wear on each leg a ring made of bronze; they let their hair grow long, and when they catch any vermin on their persons, bite it and throw it away. ”

“ There the table-land is rough and bare, the valleys are narrow and deep clefts, the soil is stony. From Libanus the eye looks out on the most various groups of wooded promontories and a smiling coast, but in Judæa the landscape exhibits none but severe and simple outlines. On the wide expanses only a few bushes of pale olives arise, or transparent groups of a few palm-trees. The grassy plains have made way for steppes or downs, and even the bed of the valleys is covered with fresh green only in the brief rainy season. The region round the Dead Sea is wholly desolate. ”

“ Earthquakes are now frequent in the country. Volumes of smoke are observed to issue from the lake, and new crevices are daily found on its margin.
The country is mountainous. The range of Libanus, so named on account of their snowy summits, from the Hebrew "Lebanon," white, is imperfectly defined. The principal part of them lies towards the north of Galilea, but the name of Libanus is sometimes given to several parallel chains, which run through the whole extent of Palæstine. ”

“ The complexion of the Libn, which the people pronounce “Libin,” suggests grey granite profusely intersected with white quartz: hence, probably, the name, identical with Lebanon and Libanus—“the Milk Mountain.” The title covers a multitude of peaks: the Bedawin have, doubtless, their own terms for every head and every hollow. The citizens comprehensively divide the block into two, El-Áli (“the Upper”) being its southern, and El–Asfal (“the Lower”) its northern, section. It is said to abound in water; and a Nakhil (“date-grove”) is described as growing near the summit. ”

“ More inland is Antilibanus, culminating towards the south in Hermon, and prolonged northward in the Jebel Shashabu, Jebel Biha, and Jebel-el-Ala, which extends from near Hems to the latitude of Aleppo. More striking than even Lebanon at its lower extremity, where Hermon lifts a snowy peak into the air during most of the year, it is on the whole inferior in beauty to the coast range, being bleaker, more stony, and less broken up by dells and valleys towards the south, and tamer, barer, and less well supplied with streams in its more northern portion. ”

“ Babylonia, with its wondrous city, between the Uphrates and the Tigris, was occupied by the Assyrians or Chaldæans, under their king Labynetus: a territory populous and fertile, partly by nature, partly by prodigies of labor, to a degree which makes us mistrust even an honest eye-witness who describes it afterward in its decline—but which was then in its most flourishing condition. The Chaldean dominion under Labynetus reached to the borders of Egypt, including as dependent territories both Judæa and Phenicia. ”

“ The Liban (لبان) is a species of gum, collected by the Bedouin Arabs who inhabit the deserts between Kordofan and Shilluk, on the road to Sennaar. It is said to exude from the stem of a tree in the same manner as gum arabic. It is sold in small thin cakes, [294] is of a dull gray colour, very brittle, and has a strong smell. The country people use it as a perfume, but it is dear. It is much in demand for the inhabitants of Taka, and all the tribes between the Nile and the Red Sea. It is exported to Souakin; the Cairo merchants receive it from Djidda. ”

“ With the multitude of my chariots I have gone up to the height of the mountains, to the top of Libanus: and I will out down its tall cedars, and its choice fir trees, and will enter to the top of its height, to the forest of its Carmel.
25 I have digged, and drunk water, and have dried up with the sole of my foot, all the rivers shut up in banks.
26 Hast thou not heard what I have done to him of old? from the days of old I have formed it: and now I have brought it to effect: and it hath come to pass that hills fighting together, and fenced cities should be destroyed. ”