<TEI xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" xmlns:py="http://codespeak.net/lxml/objectify/pytype" py:pytype="TREE"><text><body><div type="translation" n="urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0062.tlg054.perseus-eng3" xml:lang="eng"><div type="textpart" subtype="section" xml:base="urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0062.tlg054.perseus-eng3" n="6"><p>I myself never saw anyone so affected and I pray I may never see a human being tormented in this way; but then I have never set foot in Libya, I am glad to say. I have heard of an inscription which one of my friends said he himself had read on the tombstone of a man who had died in this way. He said that on a journey from Libya to Egypt his route passed the great Syrtis gulf, the only way he could go. There on the shore right by the water’s edge he found a grave with a stone on it revealing the manner of death. There was a man carved on it looking like Tantalus in the paintings, standing in a lake and scooping up water, obviously to drink it, with the animal, a dipsad, wound round his foot clinging tight; a number of women were fetching water and pouring it over him together. Nearby lay eggs of the ostriches


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which I said the Garamantes hunted. There was also the inscription, which I may as well add:
<quote><l>Such were the sufferings, methinks, of Tantalus too,</l><l>Never to still hot venom’s racking thirst,</l><l>Such the jar Danaïd maids ne’er filled,</l><l>Though ever drawing water with unending toil of carrying.</l></quote>
There are four more lines about the eggs and how he was bitten as he took them, but I can no longer remember them.
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