Psyller

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The Psyller (Latin Psylli , Greek  Ψύλλοι ) were a tribe in ancient Libya . They inhabited the area in the northeast of the Great Syrte and the Cyrenaica . In the east they were adjacent to the Nasamonen and in the south to the Garamanten .

When the land of the Psylons soon after 500 BC BC was affected by a severe drought, they had to look around for new settlement areas, but were attacked on the way by the Nasamons and largely exterminated. But a small part of the people survived; and in later times his descendants are mentioned by various ancient authors.

These descendants of the psyllic were known for their immunity to snakebites and stings from poisonous spiders and scorpions as well as for their remedies against animal poisons, which Herodotus did not report on yet. Pliny the Elder connects the Pysller with the people of the Italian Martians , who also conjured up snakes. The help of the psylarians with injuries from poisonous animals was considered very effective and therefore most welcome. Also Octavian should have tried the v of his 30th Egyptian Queen Cleopatra captured when she - allegedly by snakebite - killed herself, to be brought back to life by Psyller.

An Indian people also called Psylloi only mentions Aelian .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Herodotus , Historien 4, 173; Pliny , Naturalis historia 7, 14; Aulus Gellius , Noctes Atticae 16, 11, 3–8 (after Herodotus, but fabulously decorated).
  2. ↑ Eckart Olshausen : Psylloi. In: The Little Pauly (KlP). Volume 4, Stuttgart 1972, Col. 1214.
  3. ↑ Pliny, Naturalis Historia 7, 13-14; Lukan , Pharsalia 9, 890-911; Strabon , Geographika 13, 1, 14; Celsus , De Medicina 5, 27, 3.
  4. ^ Pliny, Naturalis Historia 7:15.
  5. ↑ Suetonius , Augustus 17: 4; Cassius Dio , Roman History 51, 14, 3f .; Lukan, Pharsalia 9, 891ff .; Orosius , Historiae adversus paganos 6, 19, 18.
  6. ↑ Aelian, De natura animalium 16, 37.