S9S 
Pliny's itatueal histoex. 
[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 
Asbystse and the Macse^, 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 with 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 ofi" 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 Boohart. The ISTasamones were a powerful but savage people 
of Libya, who dwelt originally on the shores of the Grreater Syrtis, but 
were driven inland by the G-reek settlers of Cyrenaica, and afterwards by 
the Romans. ^ From fieabs " the middle," and dfj.fjLos *' sand." 
2 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. 
4 In most of tlie editions they are called * Hammanientes.' It has been 
suggested that they were so called from the Greek word d/ifios " sand." 
^ This story he borrows from Herodotus, B. iv. c. 158. 
^ From the G-reek word rpujyXodvraL, " dwellers in 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 uncivilized 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. 
