EthiopiaAithiopas

Ethiopia is mentioned several times in The Iliad, The Odyssey and the Histories; The primary city of Ethiopia was Meroe which was, according to the historian, Herodotus, forty days on foot and twelve days by boat south of the city of Elephantine on the Nile River; in another part of his narrative, Herodotus says that the Ethiopians lived in Libya towards the southern sea.

The exact location of Ethiopia was, at best, nebulous to the Greeks of Herodotus’ time; there seems to have been two conceptions of Ethiopia: one was the historical land coveted by the Persian Empire and the other was a mythical Ethiopia that Poseidon (lord of the Sea) favored with personal visits.

Homer says that the Ethiopians were the most distant of men and lived in two separate lands that were identified as where the Titan, Hyperion, rose and sat; when the Greek hero, Menelaos (Menelaus), was making his meandering way back to Sparta after the sack of the city of Troy, he said that he traveled to Egypt, Ethiopia and Libya which only implies that Ethiopia was somewhere in Africa.

Dionysus, the god of wine, was born on Mount Nysa which, according to Herodotus, was in Ethiopia.

• Histories, book 2, chapters 29 and 146; book 3 chapter 17
• Odyssey, book 1, lines 22-23; book 4, line 84