Libya

“ Nor is there in sandy Libya to be found a serpent so venomous and eager for human blood as is this false one; who not only in the sweetness of her voice and honeyed words, but in her eyes, her smiles, her aspect and in all her ways, is a very siren. ”

“ The coast of Libya along the sea which washes it to the north, throughout its entire length from Egypt to Cape Soloeis, which is its furthest point, is inhabited by Libyans of many distinct tribes who possess the whole tract except certain portions which belong to the Phoenicians and the Greeks. Above the coast-line and the country inhabited by the maritime tribes, Libya is full of wild beasts; while beyond the wild beast region there is a tract which is wholly sand, very scant of water, and utterly and entirely a desert. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For though Libya is fully settled and abounds in inhabitants, yet when we wish to express complete desolation we say ‘more desolate than Libya,’ not meaning to refer to its emptiness, but to the poor spirit of its inhabitants. And after all, who would be afraid of men who, when nature gives hands as the distinctive feature of man among all living creatures, carry them 111about all their life inside their tunics idle?48 And more than all, who wear shirts under their inner tunics, that they may not even when they fall in battle show their nakedness to their enemies?... ”

“ Libya, in like manner, will include the modern Tunis and Tripoli: it will begin on the west with St. Augustine's town of Hippo; and its coast is colonized from Tyre and Greece, dividing it into the two districts of Carthage and Cyrene. Egypt, the country of the River, and Arabia, the country of no River, are to be thought of as the two great southern powers of separate Religion. ”

“ He so devastated the vast tract of Libya that a traveller, during a long journey, considered it a remarkable thing to meet a single man; and yet there were eighty thousand Vandals who bore arms, besides women, children and servants without number. ”

“ Libya belongs to one of the above-mentioned tracts, for it adjoins on Egypt. In Egypt the tract is at first a narrow neck, the distance from our sea to the Erythraean not exceeding a hundred thousand fathoms, in other words, a thousand furlongs; but from the point where the neck ends, the tract which bears the name of Libya is of very great breadth.
For my part I am astonished that men should ever have divided Libya, Asia, and Europe as they have, for they are exceedingly unequal. ”

“ The third looks towards Libya itself, and is favourably situated as a base for attacking the promontories in front of Carthage, from which it is distant about one thousand stades. It is turned to the south-west, separating the Libyan from the Sardinian Sea, and its name is Lilybaeum. On the cape stands the city of the same name, of which the Romans were now opening the siege. It is excellently defended both by walls and by a deep moat all round, and on the side facing the sea by shoaly water, the passage through which into the harbour requires great skill and practice. ”

“ The deserts of Libya, indeed, afford us greater novelties, and its sandy plains are more fertile in monsters: but thou, favoured region, art adorned with useful productions only, productions which can satisfy all the wants of man. Even those heaps of ice, those frowning rocks in appearance so sterile, contribute largely to the general good, for they supply inexhaustible fountains to fertilize the land. ”

“ The Greeks called the continent of Africa by the name of Libya. So Polybius (iii. 37) says that the Don is the boundary of Europe, and that Libya is separated from Asia and Europe respectively by the Nile and the Straits of Gibraltar, or, as he calls the latter, " the mouth at the pillars of Hercules." ”

“ Since Libya touched the western boundary of Lower Egypt, barbarians made frequent inroads on the territory of his holiness, and were terribly punished. Convinced at last that war with Libyans was resultless, the pharaohs, or, more accurately, the priesthood, decided on another system: real Libyan families were permitted to settle in the swamps of Lower Egypt, near the seacoast, while adventurers and bandits were enlisted in the army, and became splendid warriors. ”

“ Yet verily often did I charge the labour-lightening servants that they should keep it safe, but they forgot: and now upon this island [3] is the imperishable seed of spacious Libya strown before the time appointed; for if the royal son [4] of Poseidon, lord of horses, whom Europa Tityos' child bare him on Kephisos' banks, had in his own home thrown it down beside the mouth of Hades' [5] gulf, then in the fourth generation of his sons his seed would have taken that wide continent of Libya, for then they would have gone forth from mighty Lakedaimon, and from the Argive gulf, and from Mykenai. ”

“ Since the downfall of the Saites, the eastern nomes of the Delta had always constituted a single fief, which the Greeks called the kingdom of Libya. Lords of Marea and of the fertile districts extending between the Canopic arm of the Nile, the mountains, and the sea, its princes probably exercised suzerainty over several of the Libyan tribes of Marmarica. Inaros, son of Psammetichus,** who was then the ruling sovereign, defied the Persians openly. ”

“ We know that German planes, tanks, and troops are in Libya. We know, also, that a German-Italian, or Axis, drive is soon to be launched against Wavell's forces in Libya. But when, and at what points, and the real strength of the German-Italian forces are three things we do not know. Those three things must be found out, and as soon as possible. To put it bluntly, the Fleet Air Arm is going to try to find the answers for the British Middle East High Command. And to put it even more bluntly, you chaps are going to have first crack at the job. ”

“ Group Captain Spencer paused, and his face became grim and set.
"However," he began again, "while General Wavell has been busy down in Eritrea and Ethiopia, Hitler has stepped in to lend a hand to the Italians in Libya. In short, during the last two weeks or so, German transport planes have been transporting German troops across the Mediterranean from Sicily to Tripoli in Libya. Tanks, guns, and supplies have been sneaked across in Italian ships that race for French Tunisia and then hug the coast of that French African colony and get safely to Tripoli. ”

“ There is a mine of salt on it every ten days’ journey, and men dwell there. Their houses are all built of the blocks of salt; for even these are parts of Libya where no rain falls; for the walls, being of salt, could not stand firm if there were rain. The salt there is both white and purple. Beyond this ridge the southern and inland parts of Libya are desert and waterless; no wild beasts are there, nor rain, nor forests; this region is wholly without moisture.
186. Thus from Egypt to the Tritonian lake, the Libyans are nomads that eat meat and drink milk ”

“ Libya interior is very large and desolate, in the which are many horrible wildernesses and mountaines, replenished with diuers kinds of wilde and monstrous beastes and serpents. First from Muritania or Barbary toward the South is Getulia, a rough and sauage region, whose inhabitants are wilde and wandering people. ”

“ In Libya Pentapolis is Cyrene, a city of great antiquity, but now deserted, founded by Battus the Spartan, and Ptolemais, and Arsinoe, known also as Teuchira, and Darnis, and Berenice, called also Hesperides. 5. And in the dry Libya, besides a few other insignificant towns, there are Parætonium, Chærecla, and Neapolis.
6. Egypt proper, which ever since it has been united to the Roman empire has been under the government of a prefect, besides some other towns of smaller importance, is distinguished by Athribis, and Oxyrynchus, and Thmuis, and Memphis. ”

“ And that our opponents are public enemies and barbarians and whatever worse name one might call them, is shewn not alone by Libya, which has become plunder under their hands, nor by the inhabitants of this land, who have been wrongfully slain, but also by the multitude of Roman soldiers whom these enemies have dared to kill, though they have had but one fault to charge them with—loyalty to their government. ”

“ The country on the right hand, as you go up the Nile, is called Libya, as well as that near Alexandreia and the lake Mareotis; the country on the left hand is called Arabia. The territory belonging to Heliopolis is in Arabia, but the city Cercesura is in Libya, and situated opposite to the observatory of Eudoxus. For there is shown an observing station in front of Heliopolis, as there is in front of Cnidus, where Eudoxus marked certain motions of the heavenly bodies. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many too of the Roman soldiers and of those who had followed them there from Byzantium the earth has covered. So that if one maintains that five hundred myriads of human beings perished in Libya, he would not by any means, I know, be doing justice to the facts. ”

“ Further, to my thinking the ceremonial chant first took its rise in Libya: for the women of that country chant very tunefully. And it is from the Libyans that the Greeks have learnt to drive four-horse chariots.
190. The dead are buried by the nomads in Greek fashion, save by the Nasamones. These bury their dead sitting, being careful to make the dying man sit when he gives up the ghost, and not die lying supine. Their dwellings are compact of asphodel-stalks twined about reeds; they can be carried hither and thither. Such are the Libyan usages. ”

“ Previously the doings of the world had been, so to say, dispersed, as they were held together by no unity of initiative, results, or locality; but ever since this date history has been an organic whole, and the affairs of Italy and Libya have been interlinked with those of Greece and Asia, all leading up to one end. ”

“ On the right, within a stone's-throw of where you stand, lie the boundless reaches of the Libyan Desert—a land inhospitable and accursed for unnumbered ages and unexplored by all-subduing man even to the present day. ”

“ This effort picked up steam after UN sanctions were lifted in September 2003 and as Libya announced in December 2003 that it would abandon programs to build weapons of mass destruction. Libya faces a long road ahead in liberalizing the socialist-oriented economy, but initial steps - including applying for WTO membership, reducing some subsidies, and announcing plans for privatization - are laying the groundwork for a transition to a more market-based economy. ”

“ The order of things established by the Romans in Libya rested in substance on a balance of power between the Nomad kingdom of Massinissa and the city of Carthage. ”

“ I saw, as the dahabijeh glided noiselessly along, the great procession of the wandering hordes quitting their homes, polluted by the conquering stranger, and seeking a new and glorious resting-place in the west far away.
The great and mysterious immensities of the Libyan desert became peopled in my mind with high priests in flowing robes and leopards' skins, with priestesses in heavy plaited wigs, and priests with shaven crowns, with men and women, angular and gaunt, dark and high cheek-boned, flat-footed and large-eyed, such as we see depicted on ancient tombs and papyri. ”

“ Looks forward to the swift establishment of an inclusive, representative transitional Government of Libya, and reiterates the need for the transitional period to be underpinned by a commitment to democracy, good governance, rule of law, national reconciliation and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms of all people in Libya ”

“ In Chad, the world is watching with dismay as a country torn by a devastating civil war has become a fertile field for Libya's exploitation, thus demonstrating that threats to peace can come from forces within as well as without Africa. ”

“ When the Prime Minister wanted to take military action in Libya, most of us supported him because there was a clear moral imperative: if we had not acted tens of thousands of lives would quickly have been lost. ”

“ They said there had grown up among them some wild young men, the sons of certain chiefs, who, when they came to man's estate, indulged in all manners of extravagances, and, among other things, drew lots for five of their number to go and explore the desert parts of Libya, and try if they could not penetrate farther than any had done previously. ”

“ Europe extends the entire length of the other two, and for breadth will not even (as I think) bear to be compared to them. As for Libya, we know it to be washed on all sides by the sea, except where it is attached to Asia. This discovery was first made by Necos, the Egyptian king, who on desisting from the canal which he had begun between the Nile and the Arabian gulf, sent to sea a number of ships manned by Phoenicians, with orders to make for the Pillars of Hercules, and return to Egypt through them, and by the Mediterranean. ”