In the short story “The Immortal”, the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges tells the story of Joseph Cartaphilus. To be more accurate, Cartaphilus tells his own story, with Borges the narrator doing little more than setting the scene. Cartaphilus describes living in ancient Thebes, and crossing paths with a man who sought a river in Egypt that “cleanses men of death”. The man soon dies, but Cartaphilus himself decides to seek this river, on the far side of which is the glorious City of the Immortals. He leads a group of men to find the river, but they mutiny against him and he is forced to flee. He goes to sleep one night and awakens with his hands bound and with a terrible thirst. He sees a small, brackish body of water below him, and throws himself into it. His thirst is slaked, but he is so weak he cannot move. Days pass, but he does not know how many.

Meanwhile, he is surrounded by beings he calls troglodytes: wizened, stooped men without speech who “devoured serpents”. They do nothing to help him, but instead merely watch as he struggles to survive. Eventually, he frees himself and sets his path towards the City of the Immortals. He wanders through the environs of the troglodytes, hoping that at their outskirts will lie the great city.