Greek: Pygmies Flashcards
The Nile is known as far as a voyage or journey of 4 months beyond the part which flows in Egypt. It flows form the west and the setting of the sun. And noone can speak clearly about the part after that; for this land is desolate because of its heat.
But I have heard the following from some Cyreneans who said that they had gone to an oracle of Ammon and came to speech with Etearchos, king of the Ammonians; and in some way from other conversations they came to a discussion concerning the Nile, about how noone knows its source.
But Etearchus said that some Nasamonians once came to his court, who, on being questioned if they were able to say anymore about the desert places of Libya, said that among them had been some violent sons of their chief men who, after they became men, contrived other excesses, and in particular chose by lot 5 of them to go and se ethe deserted regions of Libya.
For the Libyans and many Libyan tribes inhabit the parts of Libya along the northern sea, beginning from Egypt as far as the promontory of Soloeis (which is the end of Libya), except for as much as the Greeks and Phoenicians possess.
But as concerns the parts farther inland than this, Libya is full of wild beasts, and the parts further than this region full of wild beasts is sand and terribly waterless and empty of all things.
Therefore the young men, as the Nasamonians said, when they had been sent out by their peers and equipped well with both water and food, went first through the inhabited region. And having passed through this, they arrived at the region filled with wild beasts, and from this they passed through the desert region, making their way towards the west wind.
And having passed through a large sandy region for many days, they at last saw trees growing on a plain, and having gone forward they began to pick the fruit which was on the trees. But as they were picking, small men approached them, shorter than men of average height,
and these took and led them through very great marshes, and having passed through these, they arrived at a city in which all were equal in size to those leading them, adn in color black, and a great river flowed beside the city, and it flowed from the west to the rising sun, and crocodiles appeared in it.
Let the story of Etearchos the Ammonian be set forth by me up to this point, except that he said both that the Nasamonians returned home, as the Cyreneans said, and that the men to whom these men had come were all wizards. And Etearchos reckoned that this river was indeed the Nile
