Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/432

 898 PLINX'S NATURAL niSTORT, [Book Y. formerly called Mesammones, from the circumstance of their being located in the very midst of sands The terri- tory of Cyrene, to a distance of fifteen miles from the shore, is said to abound in trees, while for the same distance beyond that district it is only suitable for the cultivation of corn : after which, a tract of land, thirty miles in breadth and 250 in length, is productive of nothing but laser [or silphium^]. After tlie Nasamones we come to the dwellings of the Asbystae and the Macae^ and beyond them, at eleven days' journey to the west of the Greater Syrtis, the Amantes", a people also surrounded by sands in every direction. They find water however without any difficulty at a depth mostly of about two cubits, as their district receives the overflow of the waters of Mauritania. They build houses mth blocks of salt^, which they cut out of their mountains just as we do stone. From this nation to the Troglodytse*' the distance is seven days' journey in a south-westerly direction, a peo- ple with whom our only intercourse is for the purpose of procuring from them the precious stone which we call the carbuncle, and which is brought from the interior of Ethiopia. Upon the road to this last people, but turning oif towards the deserts of Africa, of which we have previously' made mention as lying beyond the Lesser Syrtis, is the region of Phazania^ ; the nation of Phazanii, belonging to which, as cording to Bochart. The Nasamones were a powerful but savage people of Libya, who dwelt originally on the shores of the Greater Syrtis, but were driven inland by the G-reek settlers of Cyrenaica, and afterwards by the Eomans. i From neaos " the middle," and d/nnos " sand." " See note ^ in p. 396. 2 Herodotus places this nation to the west of the Nasamones and on the river Cinyps, now called the Wadi-Quaham. suggested that they were so called from the Greek word d/xfios " sand." ^ This story he borrows from Herodotus, B. iv. c. 158. ^ From the Greek word rpioyXo^vTai, " dwellers m caves." Pliny has used the term already (B. iv. c. 25) in reference to the nations on the banks of the Danube. It was a general name applied by the Greek geographers to various unciviHzed races who had no abodes but caves, and more especially to the inhabitants of the western coasts of the Eed Sea, along the shores of Upper Egypt and Ethiopia. 7 At the beginning of C. 4. " Which gives name to the modern Fezzan.
 * ♦ In most of the editions they are eaUed ' Hammanientes.' It has been