Nomenclature
Greek Name: Γαράμαντες
Latin Name:
Toponyms: Garama
Cultural Notes
Used four-horse chariots to hunt Ethiopian "hole-men" or troglodytes, who were very fast, ate snakes and lizards, and spoke a unique language that included bat-like squeak; shun all human contact; lived further inland behind the Nasamones in the land of wild beasts. The Garamantes "avoided all `men'" and lived without any means of defense (i.e.: nothing that Herodotos recognized as a "modern" army). Herodotos calls them an "exceedingly great nation" who farm in soil layed over earth salted from salt springs and have cows that walk backwards as they graze, due to forward curving horns.
Geographical Notes
Africa (outside Egypt); neighbors of the Nasamones inland. the river Cinyps, which rises from the so-called hill of the Graces flows through their land and issues into the sea. Ten days' journey from the Atarantes.
Citations in Herodotos
4.174 geography, shun the light and other men; 4.183 sow in earth layed on salt, backwards grazing cows, four-horse chariots; 4. 184 ten days' journey from Atarantes
Key Passages in English Translation
[4.174] Inland of these to the south, the Garamantes live in wild beast country. They shun the sight and fellowship of men, and have no weapons of war, nor know how to defend themselves
[4.183]After ten days' journey again from Augila there is yet another hill of salt and springs of water and many fruit-bearing palms, as at the other places; men live there called Garamantes, an exceedingly great nation, who sow in earth which they have laid on the salt. [2] The shortest way to the Lotus Eaters' country is from here, thirty days' journey distant. Among the Garamantes are the cattle that go backward as they graze, the reason being that their horns curve forward; [3] therefore, not being able to go forward, since the horns would stick in the ground, they walk backward grazing. Otherwise, they are like other cattle, except that their hide is thicker and harder to the touch. [4] These Garamantes go in their four-horse chariots chasing the cave-dwelling Ethiopians: for the Ethiopian cave-dwellers are swifter of foot than any men of whom tales are brought to us. They live on snakes and lizards and such-like creeping things. Their speech is like no other in the world: it is like the squeaking of bats.
English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920. Retreived from <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu>
Key Passages in Greek
[4.174] τούτων δὲ κατύπερθε πρὸς νότον ἄνεμον ἐν τῇ, θηριώδεϊ οἰκέουσι Γαράμαντες, οἳ πάντα ἄνθρωπον φεύγουσι καὶ παντὸς ὁμιλίην, καὶ οὔτε ὅπλον ἐκτέαται ἀρήιον οὐδὲν οὔτε ἀμύνεσθαι ἐπιστέαται.
[4.183] ἀπὸ δὲ Αὐγίλων διὰ δέκα ἡμερέων ἀλλέων ὁδοῦ ἕτερος ἁλὸς κολωνὸς καὶ ὕδωρ καὶ φοίνικες καρποφόροι πολλοί, κατά περ καὶ ἐν τοῖσι ἑτέροισι: καὶ ἄνθρωποι οἰκέουσι ἐν αὐτῷ τοῖσι οὔνομα Γαράμαντες ἐστί, ἔθνος μέγα ἰσχυρῶς, οἳ ἐπὶ τὸν ἅλα γῆν ἐπιφορέοντες οὕτω σπείρουσι. [2] συντομώτατον δ᾽ ἐστὶ ἐς τοὺς Λωτοφάγους, ἐκ τῶν τριήκοντα ἡμερέων ἐς αὐτοὺς ὁδός ἐστι: ἐν τοῖσι καὶ οἱ ὀπισθονόμοι βόες γίνονται: ὀπισθονόμοι δὲ διὰ τόδε εἰσι. τὰ κέρεα ἔχουσι κεκυφότα ἐς τὸ ἔμπροσθε: [3] διὰ τοῦτο ὀπίσω ἀναχωρέοντες νέμονται: ἐς γὰρ τὸ ἔμπροσθε οὐκ οἷοι τε εἰσὶ προεμβαλλόντων ἐς τὴν γῆν τῶν κερέων. ἄλλο δὲ οὐδὲν διαφέρουσι τῶν ἄλλων βοῶν ὅτι μὴ τοῦτο καὶ τὸ δέρμα ἐς παχύτητά τε καὶ τρῖψιν. [4] οἱ Γαράμαντες δὴ οὗτοι τοὺς τρωγλοδύτας Αἰθίοπας θηρεύουσι τοῖσι τεθρίπποισι: οἱ γὰρ τρωγλοδύται Αἰθίοπες πόδας τάχιστοι ἀνθρώπων πάντων εἰσὶ τῶν ἡμεῖς πέρι λόγους ἀποφερομένους ἀκούομεν. σιτέονται δὲ οἱ τρωγλοδύται ὄφις καὶ σαύρους καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα τῶν ἑρπετῶν: γλῶσσαν δὲ οὐδεμιῇ ἄλλῃ παρομοίην νενομίκασι, ἀλλὰ τετρίγασι κατά περ αἱ νυκτερίδες.
Other Testimonia
Pliny the Elder, The Natural History: Book 5, chapter 4; Book 5, chapter 5; Book 5, chapter 8; Book 6, chapter 38; Book 8, chapter 61; Book 8, chapter 70; Book 13, chapter 33; Book 37, 25
[5.4]After passing these we come to forests filled with vast multitudes of wild beasts and elephants, then desert wastes3, and beyond them the Garamantes[4], distant twelve days' journey from the Augylæ. Above the Garamantes was formerly the na- tion of the Psylli, and above them again the Lake of Lycomedes, surrounded with deserts.
4 In its widest sense this name is applied to all the Libyan tribes inhabiting the Oases on the eastern part of the Great Desert, as the Gætulians inhabited its western part, the boundary between the two nations being drawn at the sources of the Bagrada and the mountain Usargala. In the stricter sense however, and in which the term must be here understood, the name 'Garamantes' denoted the people of Phazania, the modern Fezzan, which forms by far the largest oasis in the Grand Desert of Zahara.
Strabo, Geography Book 2, chapter 5; Book 3, chapter 5; Book 4, chapter 5; Book 17, chapter 3
Other Commentary
Perseus Encyclopedia:
Garamantes, a Libyan tribe on the route from Egypt to the Atlas
W. W. How, J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotos:
Γαράμαντες. Obviously the name of the ‘Garamantes’ has been introduced here wrongly from c. 183. Pliny (v. 44-5) seems to have read ‘Gamphasantes’, of whom he says ‘nudi proeliorumque expertes, nulli externo congregantur’; cf. also Mela, i. 47; but Eustathius and Steph. Byz. s. v. read ‘Garamantes’. Others (e. g. Blakesley) suppose that H. here confuses the hunted Troglodytes of 183. 4 with their hunters; but this credits him gratuitously with a blunder.
Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898):
（Γαράμαντες). The southernmost people known to the ancients in North Africa, dwelt far south of the Great Syrtis in the region called Phazania (Fezzan), where they had a capital city, Garama. They are mentioned by Herodotos as a great people (iv. 183). He tells a number of curious things about them and their country— that the land is fertilized with salt, that their oxen have horns bending so far forward as to compel them to walk backward as they feed, etc. For other notices, see Plin. H. N. v. 5.8; Mela, i. 8.
Disambiguation
No information available at this time.