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After these is the region called Troglodytica, whose inhabitants dwel in caues and dennes: for these are their houses, and the flesh of serpents their meat, as writeth Plinie, and Diodorus Siculus. They haue no speach, but rather a grinning and chattering. There are also people without heads, called Blemines, hauing their eyes and mouth in their breast.
The reason for the distinction drawn in this passage between the 'Druids of the Galatae' and 'the philosophers of the Celts' is not clear. Diodorus Siculus calls attention to the Druidic doctrine that the souls of men were immortal, and that after the lapse of an appointed number of years they came to life again, the soul then entering into another body.
I know that Diodorus Siculus accounts for their preservation from the dryness of their country; that they have wells digged in proper places known only to themselves, and their enemies and invaders, through ignorance of these places, perish for want of water; but this account is far from being an adequate and just representation of the case.
To the idolatrous Arabs one of the most ancient universal objects of worship was that Black Stone, still kept in the building called Caabah, at Mecca. Diodorus Siculus mentions this Caabah in a way not to be mistaken, as the oldest, most honored temple in his time; that is, some half-century before our Era. Silvestre de Sacy says there is some likelihood that the Black Stone is an aerolite.
He then made his preparations for the conquest of the known world, and collected an army, according to Diodorus Siculus, of six hundred thousand infantry, twenty-four thousand cavalry, and twenty-seven thousand war-chariots. It is difficult to understand how a small country like Egypt could furnish such an immense force.
Tacitus and Josephus speak likewise of woods of palm-trees, as well as Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, and Theophrastus. Among the Hebrew coins, those with date-trees are by no means rare, and the tree is easily recognised, as it is figured with its fruit. The vine, also, was one of the plants most cultivated in Palestine, and not merely for the grapes, but really for the preparation of wine.
Also to prove Plato's opinion of this island, and the inhabiting of it in ancient time by them of Europe, to be of the more credit: Marinaeus Siculus, in his Chronicle of Spain, reporteth that there hath been found by the Spaniards in the gold mines of America certain pieces of money, engraved with the image of Augustus Caesar; which pieces were sent to the Pope for a testimony of the matter by John Rufus, Archbishop of Constantinum.
'The gods announced, said Diodorus Siculus, 'by a remarkable portent, his success and future greatness; a blazing torch appeared in the heavens at night, and went before the fleet of Timoleon until he arrived in Sicily. The comets of the years 134 B.C. and 118 B.C. were not regarded as portents of death, but as signalising, the former the birth, the latter the accession, of Mithridates.
Loose and highly coloured accounts of the wealth of Thebes had reached Greece even before the time of Homer, and again through Herodotus and other travellers in the Delta; but nothing was certainly known of it till it was visited by Hecatæus of Abdera, who, among other works, wrote a history of the Hyperborean or northern nations, and also a history, or rather a description of Egypt, part of which we now read in the pages of Dio-dorus Siculus.
To the idolatrous Arabs one of the most ancient universal objects of worship was that Black Stone, still kept in the building called Caabah at Mecca. Diodorus Siculus mentions this Caabah in a way not to be mistaken, as the oldest, most honored temple in his time; that is, some half-century before our Era. Silvestre de Sacy says there is some likelihood that the Black Stone is an aerolite.
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