404 PLINY's IfATUEAL HISTOET. [Book V. 



pians^ dwell. Beyond^ these are the Nigritse', nations of 

 -Ethiopia, so called from the river Nigris^, which has been 

 previously mentioned, the Grymnetes^, sumamed Pharusii, 

 and, on the very margin of the ocean, the Perorsi®, whom 

 we have already spoken of as lying on the boundaries 

 of Mauritania. After passing all these peoples, there are 

 vast deserts towards the east until we come to the Gara- 

 mantes, the Augylae, and the TroglodytaB; the opinion of 

 those being exceedingly well founded who place two -Sthio- 

 pias beyond the deserts of Africa, and more particularly 

 that expressed by Homer^, who tells us that the -Ethiopians 

 are divided into two nations, those of the east and those of 

 the west. The river Nigris has the same characteristics as 

 the Nile ; it produces the calamus, the papyrus, and just 

 the same animals, and it rises at the same seasons of the 

 year. Its source is between the Tarraelian Ethiopians 

 and the (Ecalicae. Magium, the city of the latter people, 

 has been placed by some writers amid the deserts, and, next 



^ Or "White Ethiopians," men though of dark complexion, not 

 negroes. Marcus is of opinion that the words " intervenientibus desertis" 

 refer to the tract of desert country lying between the Leucsethiopians and 

 the Liby-Egyptians, and not to that between the Gsetuhans on the one 

 hand and the Liby-Egyptians and the Leuctethiopians on the other. 



2 Meaning to the south and the south-east of these three nations, accord- 

 ing to Marcus, Rennel takes the Leucsethiopians to be the present Man- 

 dingos of higher Senegambia : Marcus however thinks that they are the 

 Azanaghis, who dwell on the edge of the Great Desert, and are not of so 

 black a complexion as the Mandingos. 



3 Probably the people of the present Nigritia or Soudan. 



* Marcus is of opinion that Pliny does not here refer to the Joliba of 

 Park and other travellers, as other commentators have supposed; but 

 that he speaks of the river called Zis by the modem geographers, and 

 which Jackson speaks of as flowing from the south-east towards north-west. 

 The whole subject of the Niger is however enwrapped in almost impene- 

 trable obscurity, and as the most recent inquirers have not come to any 

 conclusion on the subject, it would be little more than a waste of time 

 and space to enter upon an investigation of the notions which Pliny and 

 Mela entertained on the subject. ^ JVom yu/xvos, " naked." 



^ Mentioned in C. 1 of the present Book. 



7 He refers to the words in the Odyssey, B. i. 1. 23, 24. — 

 AiQioiras Toi Six9a dpdaidrai, ecrxaroi dvSpojv' 

 Oi fiev dvffofievov 'YTrepiovos, oi 8' dviovTos. 

 " The iEthiopians, the most remote of mankind, are divided into two 

 parts, the one at the setting of Hyperion, the other at his rising." 



