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. 



*♦ In most of the editions they are eaUed ' Hammanientes.' It has been 

 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. 



