ABSTRACT
On the African side there are Tacompsos, and after it Maggore, Saea, Edos, Plenariae, Pinnis, Magassa, Buma, Linthuma, Spintum, Sydop, the Censi, Pindicitora, Acug, Orsum, Sansa, Maumarum, Urbim, the town of Molum, by the Greeks called Hypaton, Pagoarca, Zmanes, at which points elephants begin to be found, the Mambli, Berressa, and.Acetuma; there was formerly a town also called Epis, over against Meroe, which had, however, been destroyed before Bion wrote. These are the names of places given as far as Meroe; but hardly any of them now exist. A t all events, the praetorian
troops that were sent by the Emperor Nero, under the command of a tribune, for the purposes of enquiry, when, among his other wars, he was contemplating an expedition against Ethiopia, brought back word that they had met with nothing but deserts on their route. The Roman arms penetrated into these regions in the time of the late Emperor Augustus, under the command of P. (or Caius?) Petronius, a man of Equestrian rank and Prefect of Egypt. That general took the following cities, the only ones we now find mentioned there, in the following order: Pselcis, Primis, Abuncis, Phthuris, Cambusis, Atteva, and Stadasis, where the river Nile, as it thunders down the precipices, has quite deprived the inhabitants of the power of hearing; he also sacked the town of Napata. The extreme distance to which he penetrated beyond Syene was 970 miles; it was not the Roman arms that rendered these regions a desert. Ethiopia, gaining in its turn the mastery, and then again reduced to servitude, was at last worn out by its continual wars with Egypt, having been a famous and powerful country even at the time of the Trojan war, when Memnon was its king. It is evident from the fabulous stories about Andromeda, that it ruled over Syria in the time of King Cepheus, and that its sway extended as far as the shore of our sea.
