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Next to these Phoenicians the Carthaginians, according to their own
accounts, made the voyage. For Sataspes, son of Teaspes the
Achaemenian, did not circumnavigate Libya, though he was sent to do
so; but, fearing the length and desolateness of the journey, he
turned back and left unaccomplished the task which had been set him by
his mother. This man had used violence towards a maiden, the daughter
of Zopyrus, son of Megabyzus, and King Xerxes was about to impale
him for the offence, when his mother, who was a sister of Darius,
begged him off, undertaking to punish his crime more heavily than the
king himself had designed. She would force him, she said, to sail
round Libya and return to Egypt by the Arabian gulf. Xerxes gave
his consent; and Sataspes went down to Egypt, and there got a ship
and crew, with which he set sail for the Pillars of Hercules.
Having passed the Straits, he doubled the Libyan headland, known as
Cape Soloeis, and proceeded southward. Following this course for
many months over a vast stretch of sea, and finding that more water
than he had crossed still lay ever before him, he put about, and came
back to Egypt. Thence proceeding to the court, he made report to
Xerxes, that at the farthest point to which he had reached, the coast
was occupied by a dwarfish race, who wore a dress made from the palm
tree. These people, whenever he landed, left their towns and fled
away to the mountains; his men, however, did them no wrong, only
entering into their cities and taking some of their cattle. The reason
why he had not sailed quite round Libya was, he said, because the
ship stopped, and would no go any further. Xerxes, however, did not
accept this account for true; and so Sataspes, as he had failed to
accomplish the task set him, was impaled by the king's orders in
accordance with the former sentence. One of his eunuchs, on hearing
of his death, ran away with a great portion of his wealth, and reached
Samos, where a certain Samian seized the whole. I know the man's
name well, but I shall willingly forget it here.
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