The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea. Vol. IZurara, Gomes Eannes de
History
The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea. Vol. I
Zurara, Gomes Eannes de
Guinea (Region) -- Discovery and exploration -- Early works to 1800
[Endnote 9: (p. 7). _Garamantes_, _etc._--Properly the inhabitants of
Fezzan--"Garama," or "Phazania" in classical language. Γαράμαντεσ ...
ἔθνοσ μέγα ἰσχυρῶσ [Garamantes ... ethnos mega ischyrôs] says Herodotus
(iv, 183). Yet like the Nasamones and other nations of this part, they
are apparently conceived of by H. as a people confined to a single oasis
of the desert. The Garamantes' land, H. adds, is thirty days' journey
from the Lotos Eaters on the North coast of Africa, which is about the
true distance from Mourzuk, in Fezzan, to Tripoli (see the journeys of
Captain Lyon in 1820, and of Colonel Monteil in 1892). The oasis, ten
days' journey beyond the Garamantes, inhabited by the Atarantes or
Atlantes, may be the Herodotean conception of Tibesti.
Compare the story, in Herodotus, ii, 32, 33, of five Nasamonians, from
the shore of the Great Syrtes, crossing the deserts to the south of
Libya to an inhabited region, far west of their home, with fruit trees,
extensive marshes, a city inhabited by Black People of small stature, a
river flowing from west to east containing crocodiles: probably either
the modern Bornu or one of the Negro states on the Middle Niger.
Pliny (_Hist Nat._, v, 5, §36) records the conquest of the Garamantes by
Cornelius Balbus in B.C. 20, when the Romans captured Cydamus (Ghadames
in south-west Tripoli) and Garama ("clarissimum oppidum," the Germa of
the present day, whence the name "Garamantes").
In the time of Vespasian the more direct route from Œa or Tripoli to
Phazania was discovered (Pliny, _l. c._). In the reign of Tiberius,
during the revolt of Tacfarinas in Numidia, the Garamantes supported the
rebel, and after his defeat sent to Rome to sue for pardon, an unusual
embassy, as Tacitus remarks ("Garamantum legati, raro in urbe visi").
From Fezzan, in later days (about time of Trajan?) started the
remarkable expeditions of Septimius Flaccus and Julius Maternus to the
"Ethiopian land" (Sudan) and Agisymba (Region of Lake Chad?) in the
south, which reached inhabited country after a march of three and four
months respectively across the desert (see Ptolemy, i, 8, §5, from
Marinus of Tyre, now lost except in Pt.'s citations). The original
conquest by Balbus is probably referred to in Virgil's _Æneid VI_, 795,
in the prophecy of Augustus' triumphs:--
"Super et Garamantes et Indos Proferet imperium."
_The Ethiopians ... under the Shadow of Mount Caucasus_ is an extreme
instance of the mediæval geography met with so frequently in Azurara, as
no African "Mt. Caucasus" has ever been identified, even as a barbarous
misnomer for one of the African ranges; while Ethiopia, however confused
the reference, always starts from the ancient knowledge of the Sudan,
and especially the Eastern or Egyptian Sudan (see below).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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