although they have left us a mass of details on the Punic wars, and the
struggles which ensued between the Romans and the ancient Libyans,
before the domination of the Latin Republic could be firmly established.
Herodotus cites the names of a number of people who inhabited North
Africa, mostly confining himself to repeat the fables or the more
interesting facts, of which they were the object.

The nomenclature of Strabo is neither so extensive, nor does it contain
more precise or correct information. He mentions the celebrated oasis of
Ammonium and the nation of the Nasamones. Farther west, behind Carthage
and the Numidians, he also notices the Getulians, and after them the
Garamantes, a people who appear to have colonized both the oasis of
Ghadames and the oases of Fezzan. Ptolemy makes the whole of the
Mauritania, including Algeria and Morocco, to be bounded on the south by
tribes, called Gaetuliae and Melanogaeluti, on the south the latter
evidently having contracted alliance of blood with the negroes.

According to Sallust, who supports himself upon the authority of
Heimpsal, the Carthaginian historian, "North Africa was first occupied
by Libyans and Getulians, who were a barbarous people, a heterogeneous
mass, or agglomeration of people of different races, without any form of
religion or government, nourishing themselves on herbs, or devouring the
raw flesh of animals killed in the chase; for first amongst these were
found Blacks, probably some from the interior of Africa, and belonging
to the great negro family; then whites, issue of the Semitic stock, who
apparently constituted, even at that early period, the dominant race or
caste. Later, but at an epoch absolutely unknown, a new horde of
Asiatics," says Sallust, "of Medes, Persians, and Armenians, invaded the
countries of the Atlas, and, led on by Hercules, pushed their conquests
as far as Spain." [9]

The Persians, mixing themselves with the former inhabitants of the
coast, formed the tribes called Numides, or Numidians (which embrace the
provinces of Tunis and Constantina), whilst the Medes and the Armenians,
allying themselves with the Libyans, nearer to Spain, it is pretended,
gave existence to a race of Moors, the term Medes being changed into
that of Moors. [10]

As to the Getulians confined in the valleys of the Atlas, they resisted
all alliance with the new immigrants, and formed the principal nucleus
of those tribes who have ever remained in North