People
Nesamones
Nasamones
Listen to the story
The Nesamones were a Libyan people already known to the Greek historian Herodotus, who placed them around the Great Syrtis, the broad gulf on the Libyan coast. He tells that they grazed their herds near the sea in summer and then moved to the oasis of Augila to harvest dates, buried their dead sitting upright, and sought prophecies in dreams at their ancestors' graves. In AD 85 or 86, under Domitian, a Roman commander defeated them and drove them inland. The map sets them near the Altars of the Philaeni, as the geographer Strabo does, yet far to the south, which may reflect that later expulsion.