Ethiopians In The Iliad

The Ethiopians - unlike the Hyperboreans - are a real people but have been imagined by the ancient sources . Similarly, they are described as living in a golden age state in that they are purer, nobler, taller, just and more beautiful than the people at the centre . They also do not practice seafaring – despite their location beside the ocean - and have no want or use for gold . Homer’s Iliad gives the Ethiopians their first appearance in literature and in book I Thetis reports that the gods are enjoying the company of the ‘blameless Ethiopians’ . The Ethiopians then like the Hyperboreans are therefore favoured by the gods; for the Olympians of the Iliad visit the Ethiopians by impermanently abandoning civilisation’s Trojan War much like Apollo’s …show more content…
The meat producing Table of the Sun in Herodotus is indicative of the readily available abundance of food which does not require persistent toil in the Golden Age. However, it is a contrast to the Hyperboreans’ vegetarian diet of acorns. This account alone produces several similarities and differences between the Ethiopians and the Hyperboreans. The Hyperboreans, according to Pomponius Mela ‘know neither wars nor altercation’ but the Ethiopians – while they do not engage with Cambyses – have clearly encountered aggression indirectly via intermediaries of Persian civilisation whereas the Hyperboreans have never been contacted by friendly or hostile mortals. Moreover, the land of the Ethiopians in Herodotus is inaccessible to the Persians but not the Fish-Eaters. The idea here seems to underscore the impossibility of civilised forces reaching a sacred and virtuous land , not at all dissimilar to the difficulty in reaching the