The Psylli (Seli) were a native Berber tribe inhabiting Ancient Libya. [1]
Pliny the Elder (Hist. Nat., vii 14) places the Psylli on the Syrtic coast above the Garamantes, and gives Psyllikos Kolpos as an early name of the Syrtic Gulf.
According to John C. Murphy, "the Psylli were the displaced remnants of an ancient Libyan tribe that lived on the Gulf of Sidra. Conquered by the nomadic Nasamones, the Psylli became a well-known snake-charming sect." [2]
Of the Psylli, Herodotus described "a tribe that met with extinction" after the desert wind dried up their water holes (IV.173). Pliny the Elder said that they were "almost exterminated" in a war with their neighbours, the Nasamones, but the descendants of those who escaped "survive today in a few places" (VII.2.14). Strabo does not mention an unsuccessful war against either the desert wind or the Nasamones but only that the Psylli were still in existence, occupying "a barren and arid region" (XVII.3.23) below the Nasamones. Later writers, especially poets, bestowed on the Psylli a reputation as great snake charmers. [1]
In his Roman History, Cassius Dio makes reference to the Psylli as being sought out by Octavian to draw out the snake venom with which Cleopatra had poisoned herself (LI.14). According to Dio, the Psylli were completely immune to snake bites and were all male (LI.14). Lucan, speaking of the Psylli, whose peculiar property it was to be unhurt by the bite of serpents with which their country abounded, wrote:
Of all who scorching Afric's sun endure,
None like the swarthy Psyllians are secure:
With healing gifts and privileges graced,
Well in the land of serpents were they placed:
Truce with the dreadful tyrant death they have,
And border safely on his realm the grave.
— Pharsalia ix. 891, trans. by Rowe
It is claimed that the Psylli employed tests by animals in order to find out if their offspring was genuine and at the same time if their wives were faithful. Infant Psylli were subjected to snake-bites. If the infant died of the snakebite, illegitimacy was supposed to be implied. [1]
The amphisbaena is a mythological, ant-eating serpent with a head at each end. The name of the creature is alternatively written amphisbaina, amphisbene, amphisboena, amphisbona, amphista, amfivena, amphivena, or anphivena, and is also known as the "Mother of Ants". Its name comes from the Greek words amphis, meaning "both ways", and bainein, meaning "to go".
The Bastarnae, Bastarni or Basternae, also known as the Peuci or Peucini, were an ancient people who are known from Greek and Roman records to have inhabited areas north and east of the Carpathian mountains between about 300 BC and about 300 AD, stretching in an ark from the sources of the Vistula in present day Poland and Slovakia, to the Lower Danube, and including all or most of present day Moldava. The Peucini were sometimes described as a subtribe, who settled the Peuke Island in the Danube Delta, but apparently due to their importance their name was sometimes used for the Bastarnae as a whole. Near the sources of the Vistula another part of the Bastarnae were the Sidones, while the Atmoni, another tribe of the Bastarnae are only mentioned in one listing by Strabo.
Gaius Plinius Secundus, known in English as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia, a comprehensive thirty-seven-volume work covering a vast array of topics on human knowledge and the natural world, which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field.
The Gulf of Sidra (Arabic: خليج السدرة, romanized: Khalij as-Sidra, also known as the Gulf of Sirte, is a body of water in the Mediterranean Sea on the northern coast of Libya, named after the oil port of Sidra or the city of Sirte. It was also historically known as the Great Sirte or Greater Syrtis.
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The Getae or Getai were a large nation who inhabited the regions to either side of the Lower Danube in what is today northern Bulgaria and southern Romania, throughout much of Classical Antiquity. Historians' main source of information about the Getae are Greek and Roman writers, at least some of whom believed that the Getae were closely related to the neighbouring Thracians to the south, and Dacians to the north. Modern scholars continue to debate the details of these relationships, including the question of whether these three peoples spoke the same language.
Gaetuli was the Romanised name of an ancient Berber tribe inhabiting Getulia. The latter district covered the large desert region south of the Atlas Mountains, bordering the Sahara. Other documents place Gaetulia in pre-Roman times along the Mediterranean coasts of what is now Algeria and Tunisia, and north of the Atlas. During the Roman period, according to Pliny the Elder, the Autololes Gaetuli established themselves south of the province of Mauretania Tingitana, in modern-day Morocco. The name of the Godala people is hypothesized to be derived from the word Gaetuli.
Sosigenes was an Ancient Greek astronomer. According to Pliny the Elder's Natural History 18.210–212, Julius Caesar consulted him while he was designing the Julian calendar.
Snake charming is the practice of appearing to hypnotize a snake by playing and waving around an instrument called a pungi. A typical performance may also include handling the snakes or performing other seemingly dangerous acts, as well as other street performance staples, like juggling and sleight of hand. The practice was historically the profession of some tribesmen in India well into the 20th century but snake charming declined rapidly after the government banned the practice in 1972. Snake-charmer performances still happen in other Asian nations such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Malaysia. The tradition is also practiced in North African countries of Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia.
During the Iron Age and Classical antiquity, Libya referred to modern-day Africa west of the Nile river. Greek and Roman geographers placed the dividing line between Libya/Africa and Asia at the Nile. In contrast, the areas of Sub-Saharan Africa were known as Aethiopia.
The fiery flying serpent is a creature mentioned in the Book of Isaiah in the Tanakh.
The Troglodytae, or Troglodyti, were people mentioned in various locations by many ancient Greek and Roman geographers and historians, including Herodotus, Agatharchides, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Pliny, Josephus, Tacitus, Claudius Aelianus, Porphyry.
In European bestiaries and legends, a basilisk is a legendary reptile reputed to be a serpent king, who causes death to those who look into its eyes. According to the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder, the basilisk of Cyrene is a small snake, "being not more than twelve inches in length", that is so venomous, it leaves a wide trail of deadly venom in its wake, and its gaze is likewise lethal.
The Machlyes were a legendary ancient Libyan tribe.
Cleopatra VII, the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, died on either 10 or 12 August, 30 BC, in Alexandria, when she was 39 years old. According to popular belief, Cleopatra killed herself by allowing an asp to bite her, but according to the Roman-era writers Strabo, Plutarch, and Cassius Dio, Cleopatra poisoned herself using either a toxic ointment or by introducing the poison with a sharp implement such as a hairpin. Modern scholars debate the validity of ancient reports involving snakebites as the cause of death and whether she was murdered. Some academics hypothesize that her Roman political rival Octavian forced her to kill herself in a manner of her choosing. The location of Cleopatra's tomb is unknown. It was recorded that Octavian allowed for her and her husband, the Roman politician and general Mark Antony, who stabbed himself with a sword, to be buried together properly.
White Aethiopians is a term found in ancient Greco-Roman literature, which may have referred to various light-complexioned populations inhabiting the Aethiopia region of antiquity. The exonym is used by Pliny the Elder, and is also mentioned by Pomponius Mela, Ptolemy and Orosius. These authorities do not, however, agree on the geographical location of the White Aethiopians.
The Nasamones were a nomadic Berber tribe inhabiting southeast Libya. They were believed to be a Numidian people, along with the Garamantes they hunted Troglodyte referred to as Arabs of south. They had established their tribe with their important leaders as rulers and they had a sphere of influence from Siwa Oasis to the Gulf of Sitre.
Salmydessus or Salmydessos, also Halmydessus or Halmydissos (Ἁλμυδισσός), was a coast-town of ancient Thrace, on the Euxine, about 97 kilometres (60 mi) northwest of the entrance of the Bosporus. The eastern offshoots of the Haemus here come very close to the shore, which they divide from the valley of the Hebrus. The people of Salmydessus were thus cut off from communication with the less barbarous portions of Thrace, and became notorious for their savage and inhuman character, which harmonised well with that of their country, the coast of which was extremely dangerous. Aeschylus, who incorrectly places the town in Asia Minor, describes Salmydessus as "the rugged jaw of the sea, hostile to sailors, step-mother of ships;" and Xenophon informs us, that in his time its people carried on the business of wreckers in a very systematic manner, the coast being marked out into portions by means of posts erected along it, and those to whom each portion was assigned having the exclusive right to plunder all vessels and persons cast upon it. This plan, he says, was adopted to prevent the bloodshed which had frequently been occasioned among themselves by their previous practice of indiscriminate plunder. Strabo describes this portion of the coast of the Euxine as "desert, rocky, destitute of harbours, and completely exposed to the north winds;" while Xenophon characterises the sea adjoining it as "full of shoals." The earlier writers appear to speak of Salmydessus as a district only, but in later authors, as Apollodorus, Pliny the Elder, and Pomponius Mela, it is mentioned as a town.
A Libyan Myth is a short speech or speech-fragment by Dio Chrysostom, telling the story of a mythical creature from Libya, perhaps Lamia, as an allegory for human passions, especially lust. The work is also important for an understanding of Dio's ideas about myth as allegory. It is debated whether the work is a stand-alone speech or an alternative ending to On Kingship IV.
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