ABSTRACT
These extracts only show that Homer thought that there were eastern and western Ethiopians, that they were a “ blameless ” people, and that their country lay near the Ocean, and presumably far to the south of the land of the Greeks. Herodotus (B.C. 484425 ?) says (ill. 114) that the country called “ Ethiopia/’ 97 hldioiria, lies “ where the south declines towards the setting sun,” and that it is “ the last inhabited land in that direction.” He goes on to say that there is much gold there, and many elephants, and all sorts of wild trees and ebony, and that the men are taller, handsomer, and longer lived than anywhere else. Elsewhere he speaks of (ill. 97) “ the Ethiopians bordering upon Egypt, who were reduced by Cambyses when he made war on the long-lived Ethiopians,” and it is clear that he thought that the country of Ethiopia was in Libya, near Egypt, though he considered it to be a part of India, i.e. Asia. The geographer Strabo describes Ethiopia as a part of Egypt ( X V I . 4, § 8 ff.), but places it to the south of Egypt, and Pliny (Hist. Nat., V I. 35) makes the distance of the first region of Ethiopia, which is the country of the Evonymitae, to be 54 4-72 + 120, i.e. 246 miles to the south of Syene. From these various statements we may conclude that Homer and Herodotus call all the peoples of
xOiCos e/ify.
