4.189.3
Furthermore, in my opinion the ceremonial chant note first originated in Libya: for the women of that country chant very tunefully. And it is from the Libyans that the Greeks have learned to drive four-horse chariots.
ch. 190
4.190.1
The dead are buried by the nomads in Greek fashion, except by the Nasamones. They bury their dead sitting, being careful to make the dying man sit when he releases his spirit, and not die lying supine. Their dwellings are constructed of asphodel stalks note twined about reeds; they can be carried here and there. Such are the Libyan customs.
ch. 191
4.191.1
West of the Triton river and next to the Aseans begins the country of Libyans who cultivate the soil and possess houses; they are called Maxyes; they wear their hair long on the right side of their heads and shave the left, and they paint their bodies with vermilion.
4.191.2
These claim descent from the men who came from Troy. Their country, and the rest of the western part of Libya, is much fuller of wild beasts and more wooded than the country of the nomads.
4.191.3
For the eastern region of Libya, which the nomads inhabit, is low-lying and sandy as far as the Triton river; but the land west of this, where the farmers live, is exceedingly mountainous and wooded and full of wild beasts.
4.191.4
In that country are the huge snakes and the lions, and the elephants and bears and asps, the horned asses, the dog-headed and the headless men that have their eyes in their chests, as the Libyans say, and the wild men and women, besides many other creatures not fabulous.
ch. 192
4.192.1
But in the nomads' country there are none of these; but there are others, white-rumped antelopes, gazelles, hartebeest, asses, not the horned asses, but those that are called “undrinking” (for indeed they never drink), the oryx, whose horns are made the horns of the lyre (this is a beast the size of a bull),
4.192.2
foxes, hyenas, porcupines, wild rams, the dictys, jackals, panthers, the borys, note land crocodiles sixty inches long, very like lizards, and ostriches and little one-horned serpents; all these beasts besides those that are elsewhere too, except deer and wild boar; of these two kinds there are none at all in Libya.
4.192.3
There are in this country three kinds of mice, the two-footed, note the “zegeries” (this is a Libyan word, meaning in our language “hills”), and the bristly-haired, as they are called. There are also weasels found in the silphium, very like to the weasels of Tartessus. So many are the wild creatures of the nomads' country, as far as by our utmost enquiry we have been able to learn.
ch. 193
4.193.1
Next to the Maxyes of Libya are the Zauekes, whose women drive their chariots to war.
ch. 194
4.194.1
Next to these are the Gyzantes, where much honey is made by bees, and much more yet (so it is said) by craftsmen. note It is certain that they all paint themselves with vermilion and eat apes, with which their mountains swarm.
ch. 195
4.195.1
Off their coast (the Carthaginians say) lies an island called Cyrauis, twenty-five miles long and narrow across, accessible from the mainland; it is full of olives and vines.
4.195.2
It is said that there is a lake on this island from which the maidens of the country draw gold-dust out of the mud on feathers smeared with pitch. I do not know whether this is true; I just write what is said. But all things are possible; for I myself saw pitch drawn from the water of a pool in Zacynthus.
4.195.3
The pools there are numerous; the greatest of them is seventy feet long and broad, and twelve feet deep. Into this they drop a pole with a myrtle branch fastened to its end, and bring up pitch on the myrtle, smelling like asphalt, and for the rest better than the pitch of Pieria. Then they pour it into a pit that they have dug near the pool; and when a fair amount is collected there, they fill their vessels from the pit.
