Mareotis, or Mareia, or Maria, was one of the land districts into which Egypt was divided. A lake, a town situated on the shore of the lake, and the district in which they lay, all bore the same name. The district Mareotis lay just south of Alexandria, but did not include it, for Alexandria and Ptolemais formed an independent sphere of administration sharply separated from the thirty-six land districts of the country. Cf. Bk. II. chap. 17, notes 10 and 12, above. Mommsen (Roman Provinces, Scribner’s ed. Vol. II. p. 255) remarks that these land districts, like the cities, became the basis of episcopal dioceses. This we should expect to be the case, but I am not aware that we can prove it to have been regularly so, at any rate not during the earlier centuries. Cf. e.g. Wiltsch’s Geography and Statistics of the Church, London ed., I. p. 192 sq.