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The Giligamae are only mentioned by H. and writers who borrow from him; they perhaps correspond to the later Marmaridae. σίλφιον. For a long discussion of the silphium cf. R. Neumann, p. 146 seq., or Bähr ad loc. It is often identified with the modern Thapsia Garganica (Arab. Drias); it is true this does not correspond to the representations of it on the coins, which make it thick in stem; but these equally disagree with the description of Pliny, xix. 42 (‘caule ferulaceo’). (For the coins of Cyrene cf. Head, H. N. 864 seq.; for the question whether coin-types are commercial or religious cf. Hill, G. and R. C., p. 166 seq.) Pliny (xxii. 101 seq.) gives a long and amusing catalogue of the medicinal virtues of silphium, though he adds, ‘non censuerim cavernis dentium in dolore . . . includi, magno experimento hominis qui se ea de causa praecipitavit ex alto.’ It was a royal monopoly and a main source of the wealth of Cyrene; cf. Aristoph., Pl. 925, τὸ Βάττου σίλφιον (proverbial). Owing to over-production it became almost extinct in the first century A. D., but is now common again in the degenerate form of the Drias. Pacho (p. 54) notes ‘la grande exactitude’ of H. in fixing its locality. Others, however (e. g. Head, u. s.), say the true silphium is extinct; for the arguments cf. Ascherson in Rohlfs, K. p. 524. στόμα is a curious word for the promontory from which the bay of the Greater Syrtis (ii. 32. 2) bends south; but Scylax (109, G. G. M. i. 84) uses it. H. only knows one Syrtis and never describes it. The coast here was notoriously dangerous from its shifting sandbanks; cf. Strabo 836 σπάνιον εἶναι τὸ σωζόμενον σκάφος, and Lucan ix. 303 seq. for a description, especially 307 ‘Ambigua sed lege loci iacet invia sedes’.
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