thrown open to the trade of the iEgean.
Their sailors had discovered that the most convenient course thither
was to sail straight to Crete, and then to traverse the sea between this
island and the headlands of the Libyan plateau; here they fell in with a
strong current setting towards the east, which carried them quickly and
easily as far as Eakotis and Canopus, along the Marmarican shore. In
these voyages they learned to appreciate the value of the country; and
about 631 B.C. some Dorians of Thera, who had set out to seek for a new
home at the bidding of the Delphic oracle, landed in the small desert
island of Platsea, where they built a strongly fortified settlement.
Their leader, Battos,* soon crossed over to the mainland, where, having
reached the high plateau, he built the city of Cyrene on the borders of
an extremely fertile region, watered by abundant springs. The tribes of
the Labu, who had fought so valiantly against the Pharaohs of old, still
formed a kind of loose confederation, and their territory stretched
across the deserts from the Egyptian frontier to the shores of the
Syrtes. The chief of this confederation assumed the title of king, as in
the days of Minephtah or of Ramses III.**

* Herodotus seems to have been ignorant of the real name of
the founder of Cyrene, which has been preserved for us by
Pindar, by Callimachus, by the spurious Heraclides of
Pontus, and by the chronologists of the Christian epoch.
Herodotus says that _Battos_ signifies _king_ in the
language of Libya.

** The description given by Herodotus of these Libyan tribes
agrees with the slight amount of information furnished by
the Egyptian monuments for the thirteenth century B.C.

The most civilised of these tribes were those which now dwelt nearest
to the coast: first the Adyrmakhides, who were settled beyond Marea, and
had been semi-Egyptianised by constant intercourse with the inhabitants
of the Delta; then the Giligammes, who dwelt between the port of Plynus
and the island of Aphrodisias; and beyond these, again, the Asbystes,
famed for their skill in chariot-driving, the Cabales, and the
Auschises. The oases of the hinterland were in the hands of the
Nasamones and of the Mashauasha, whom the Greeks called Maxyes.

One of the revolutions so frequent among the desert tribes had compelled
the latter to remove from their home near the Nile valley, to a district
far to the west, on the