The student's Gibbon Author:Edward Gibbon Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 8 GENERAL IDEA OP THE ßOMAN EMPIRE. Chap. I. and the Sahara, or sandy desert, that its breadth seldom exceeds fourscore or an hundred miles. The eastern divis... more »ion, which was the seat of the Carthaginian empire, was considered by the Romans as the more peculiar and proper province of Africa. This was the province of Numidia, once the kingdom of Masinissa and Jugurtha, but now a dependency of the French empire. In the time of Augustus the limits of Numidia were contracted ; and at least two- thirds of the country acquiesced in the name of Mauritania, with the epithet of Csesariensis. The genuine Mauritania, or country of the Moors, was distinguished by the appellation of Tingitana, from the ancient city of Tingi, or Tangier. § 15. Having now finished the circuit of the Roman empire, we may observe that Africa is divided from Spain by a narrow strait of about twelve miles, through which the Atlantic flows into the Mediterranean. The Columns of Hercules, so famous among the ancients, were two mountains which seemed to have been torn asunder by some convulsion of the elements ; and at the foot of the European mountain the fortress of Gibraltar is now seated. The whole extent of the Mediterranean Sea, its coasts, and its islands, were comprised within the Roman dominion. Of the larger islands, the two Baleares, which derive their names of Majorca and Minorca from their respective size, are subject at present to Spain. Corsica Is now a department of France. Two Italian sovereigns assume a regal title from Sardinia and Sicily. Crete and Cyprus, and the smaller islands of Asia, are subject to Turkey ; but the islands in the western part of the ./Egean form part of the new kingdom of Greece. § 16. This long enumeration of provinces, whose broken fragments have formed so many powerfu...« less