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He drove Antony to kill himself, after he had used every effort to obtain conditions of peace, and he saw his corpse . Cleopatra he anxiously wished to save for his triumph; and when she was supposed to have been bit to death by an asp, he sent for the Psylli to endeavour to suck out the poison.
Populorum varia nomina. Clarissimi Nasamones, extra Africam propriam etiam Cyrenaica et Marmarica contermini; quos antea Mesammones Graci adpellaverunt, ab argumento loci, medios inter arenas sitos, et ab his sublati Psylli, quorum corpori ingenitum fuit virus exitiale serpentibus, ut cujus odore vel fugarent vel sopirent eas: et supra Carthaginem Libyphoenices, iidem et Poeni a Phoenice Tyro profecti, Duce Eliza sive Didone, qua Carthaginem condidit.
You know all about the Psylli, or ancient serpent-tamers, I suppose. Savary gives an account of the modern serpent-tamers in his "Letters on Egypt." I am afraid I cannot throw much light on "Christabel" or "Lamia" by any criticism I can offer. Geraldine, in the former, seems to be simply a malignant witch-woman, with the evil eye, but with no absolute ophidian relationship.
If they were playing at discus, they would manage to crush his feet, or if at boxing to fracture his jaw with the very first blow. The slingers terrified the Carthaginians with their slings, the Psylli with their vipers, and the horsemen with their horses, while their victims, addicted as they were to peaceful occupations, bent their heads and tried to smile at all these outrages.
He took also with him some of those they call Psylli, who cure the biting of serpents, by sucking out the poison with their mouths, and have likewise certain charms, by which they stupefy and lay asleep the serpents. Thus they marched seven days together, Cato all the time going on foot at the head of his men, and never making use of any horse or chariot.
And as he went the blood-drops fell to the earth from the Gorgon's head, and became poisonous asps and adders, which breed in the desert to this day. Over the sands he went, he never knew how far or how long, feeding on the fruit which the Nymphs had given him, till he saw the hills of the Psylli, and the Dwarfs who fought with cranes.
The eunuch, at the moment her body was taken up, presented himself voluntarily to the serpents, and after being bitten by them leaped into a coffin which had been prepared by him. Caesar on hearing of her demise was shocked, and both viewed her body and applied drugs to it and sent for Psylli, in the hope that she might possibly revive.
Upon hearing that Scipio, the father-in-law of Pompeius, had been well received by King Juba, and that Varus Attius, who had been appointed governor of Libya by Pompeius, was with them with a force, he set out by land in the winter season, having got together a number of asses to carry water, and driving along with him a quantity of cattle, and also taking chariots and the people called Psylli, who cure the bites of serpents by sucking out the poison with their mouths, and deaden and soothe the serpents themselves by charming them with music.
In the light of these examples a story told by Herodotus, which his modern critics have treated as a fable, is perfectly credible. He says, without however vouching for the truth of the tale, that once in the land of the Psylli, the modern Tripoli, the wind blowing from the Sahara had dried up all the water-tanks. So the people took counsel and marched in a body to make war on the south wind.
But the same tone runs through Goethe's classical "Walpurgis Night," where the old human "twelve gods," the antitypes and the friends of men, in whom our forefathers delighted, have vanished utterly, and given place to semi-physical Nereides, Tritons, Telchines, Psylli, and Seismos himself.