aut tempus meruit. glacie non ille soluta 25
nec circumfuso scopulis exuberat imbre.
nam cum tristis hiems alias produxerit undas,
tunc Nilum retinent ripae; cum languida cessant
flumina, tunc Nilus mutato iure tumescit.
quippe quod ex omni fluvio spoliaverit aestas, 30
hoc Nilo natura refert, totumque per orbem
collectae partes unum revocantur in amnem;
Fertile is Egypt without clouds; here alone is sunshine and yet rain. She regards not the sky, needs not the wind; enough for her the water she herself contains, Nile’s overflow. This swiftly-flowing river rises in the mountainous country of the south where it suffers the heats of the torrid zone and of the scorching Crab and issues forth from regions unknown into our world. Whence it comes none knows, for vain has ever been the search after its springing nor has any ever seen that source. ’Tis said that, fashioned without witness, it pours forth waters that have known a clime other than ours. Thence with errant stream it stretches through all Libya, and through Ethiopia’s thousand dusky kingdoms where it waters lands condemned to the sun’s unceasing fires, saviour of thirsting peoples, and threads its course across Meroë and black Syene and through the country of the wild Blemyae. The unconquered Garamantes and the Gyrraei who can tame wild animals drink of its waters, as do those tribes who dwell in huge rocky caverns, gathering the wood of ebony-trees and robbing the elephant of his tusks of ivory, and the folk who wear arrows in their hair.