Africa

Hist. Brit. (1) 5. 11; P. L. 1. 585; P. R. 2. 199, 347; Decl. Poland 8. 463. Sometimes the continent of Africa, and sometimes the Roman province of Africa, corresponding to the modern Tunisia. In P. R. 2. 347 Milton refers to the fisheries on the coast of Africa, made well-known by the story of the Roman glutton Apicius, whom he mentions in 7 Proliis. 7. 451. An ultimate source for the reference to the monsters of Africa in Comns 606 is perhaps Diodorus 3. 50. The idea appears in Fairfax’s Ta o: All monsters which hot Africke doth forth send Twixt Nilus, Atlas, and the southern Cape, Were ail there met. (15. 51.) Compare also, e. g., Ben Jonson, Vision on the Muses of his Friend M. Drayton, Donne, Satyre 4. 22, and Camoens, Lmsiads 10. 92. rio so 33. 111. African harpies are mentioned in the Orlando Fu- For similar phenomena in the desert of Gobi see Seric an a. 26