XII. The fable of the river Lethe, whose waters the dead are obliged to drink, to make them forget all they ever saw or knew in the region of the living, and also that of the boatman Charon, are both of African origin. This river rises near the great bog or quicksand, and after running under ground, and being hid for some miles, shews itself again near to the city of Berenica, now Bernick or Bernisho, greatly increased in size, by the addition made to it, by subterraneous waters; and this made it thought, that it was not the same river which they had before seen bury itself under ground, and was also the circumstance, that gave rise to its deriving its source from Hell. XIII. The river likewise which was antiently called Lethe, but now goes by the name of Limia, and runs through my native country; and concerning which, there was once a prevailing opinion among the Romans, that it had the same properties which the poets attributed to the infernal river, causing forgetfulness, not only in those who drank of its waters, but also in those who waded through it, and it not being then certain whether this error or preoccupation with respect to the river Lethe, and the fiction of its source originating in Hell, took its rise from the river Lethe of my country; or whether the fable of the river Lethe coming from Hell, and the property of its waters being then established, might have occasioned the confounding the river Lethe of Galicia with the other. XIV. I say, however this was, the opinion of the qualities of the river Lethe, was so rooted and fixed among the vulgar of the Romans, that when the consul Decimus Brutus, as Florus calls him, or Aulus Brutus, as he is called by Paterculus, was engaged in the conquest of Galicia, and who on account of his having conquered it, obtained the surname of Gallego; I say, when this consul came to the river Lethe, which is fordable, none of his soldiers, for fear of incurring that general forgetfulness, would venture to wade through it, till the consul who was not preoccupied with the vulgar error, passed thro’ it to the opposite shore; and when he was arrived there, turned about and called some of his countrymen by their names, by which he gave them to understand, that he had not incurred the forgetfulness they so much dreaded; and said further to them, as Florus informs us, _Formidatum Romanis fluvium oblivionis_.