Abstract

It was natural and inevitable that his two Aethiopias, in the eastern and western extremities of the world, should be identified with the countries of the two dark-skinned peoples in the Far East and the Far West of the Ancient World: India and Mauretania. There was the difficulty that the real Aethiopia was in Africa, neither in the Far East nor in the Far West. Serious writers on geography tried to reconcile Homer and the geographical facts. I wish to excerpt from Strabo three theories concerning Aethiopia and the Aethiopians which will then be used to elucidate passages in Latin literature