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Tingitana provincia, quam nunc duo regna Fez et Morocco occupant, ab urbe Tingi, quae nunc vulgo Tanger, cognomen accepit, ante Bogudiana dicta a Rege Bogud. Opida in ea, Tingi modo dictum, caput provinciae, ab Anteeo conditum; Iulia Constantia, Zilis, Volubilia et Lixus, vel fabulosissime ab antiquis narrata. Ibi quidpe regia Antaei, certamenque cum Hercule, et Hesperidum horti.
If we may generalise from the most perfect specimens of Phoenician town-walls that are still fairly traceable, as those of Eryx and Lixus, we may lay it down, that such walls were usually flanked, at irregular intervals, by square or rectangular towers, which projected considerably beyond the line of the curtain.
The settlements planted by Tyre in the first burst of her colonising energy seem to have been, besides Gades, Thasos, Abdera, and Pronectus towards the north, Malaca, Sexti, Carteia, Belon, and a second Abdera in Spain, together with Caralis in Sardinia, Tingis and Lixus on the West African coast, and in North Africa Hadrumetum and the lesser Leptis.
The ancient Lixus deserves farther mention on account of the interest attached to its coins, a few of which remain, although but very recently deciphered by archeologists. Strabo says: "Mauritania generally, excepting a small part desert, is rich and fertile, well watered with rivers and washed with lakes; abounding in all things, and producing trees of great dimensions."
This city replaces the ancient Liscas or Lixus and Lixa, whose ruins are near. The Arabs call it El-Araish Beai-Arous, i.e., the vineyards of the Beni-Arous, a powerful tribe, who populate the greater part of the district of Azgar, of which it is the capital and the residence of the Governor.
At the south-west angle no fewer than thirty-one courses of this massive character have been counted by the recent explorers, who estimate the weight of the largest block at something above a hundred tons! A similar method of construction is found to have prevailed at Tyre, at Sidon, at Aradus, at Byblus, at Leptis Major, at Eryx, at Motya, at Gaulos, and at Lixus on the West African coast.
While Tingis lay at the junction of the two seas, on the northern African coast, about five miles east of Cape Spartel, Lixus was situated on the open Atlantic, forty miles to the south of that cape, on the West African coast, looking westward towards the ocean. The streams from Atlas here collect into a considerable river, known now as the Wady-el-Khous, and anciently as the Lixus.
"Only a weevil, the Lixus," which he is observing in a cage, "continues, step by step, without the slightest emotion, his amorous by-play, as though nothing unusual were happening...The nightingale and the skylark may be silent, oppressed by fear; the bee may re-enter her hive; but is a weevil to be upset because the sun threatens to go out?"
Thence we came to the great river Lixus, which flows from Libya. On its banks the Lixitae, a wandering tribe, were feeding flocks, amongst whom we continued some time on friendly terms. Beyond the Lixitae dwelt the inhospitable Ethiopians, who pasture a wild country intersected by large mountains, from which they say the river Lixus flows.
Outside the Straits of Gibraltar; in Africa, Tingis, and Lixus; in Spain, Tartessus, Gades, and Belon Summary.
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