404 
plint's katural histoex. 
[Book V. 
plans ^ dwell. Eeyond^ these are the Nigritae^, nations of 
JEthiopia, so called from the river Nigris^, which has been 
previously mentioned, the Gymnetes^, snrnamed 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 Augylse, and the Troglodytse; the opinion of 
those being exceedingly well founded who place two JSthio- 
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 JSTigris 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 Tarrselian -Ethiopians 
and the GEcalicsD. Magium, the city of the latter people, 
has been placed by some writers amid the deserts, and, next 
^ Or "WMte JEthiopians," men though of dark complexion, not 
negroes. Marcus is of opinion that the words " intervenientibas desertis" 
refer to the tract of desert country lying between the Leucsethiopians and 
the Liby-Egyptians, and not to that between the Cbetuhans on the one 
hand and the Liby-Egyptians and the Leucsethiopians 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 dweU on the edge of the G-reat 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 PHny 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 modern geographers, and 
which Jackson speaks of as flowingfrom 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 Httle more than a waste of time 
and space to enter upon an investigation of the notions which Pliny and 
Mela entertained on the subject. ^ Erom yvfivos^ "naked." 
^ Mentioned in C. 1 of the present Book. 
7 He refers to the words in the Odyssey, B. i. 1. 23, 24. — 
AiOiOTras roi ^t%0a dedaidrai, eff^arot dvdpcjv' 
Ol [lev dv(TO[ievov 'Y7r6jOtovos, ol d' dviSvros, 
" The Ethiopians, the most remote of mankind, are divided into two 
parts, the one at the setting of Hyperion, the other at his rising." 
