Citation with stable link: Philip A. Harland, 'Ethiopians: Strabo on a hard lifestyle in a harsh environment (early first century CE),' Ethnic Relations and Migration in the Ancient World, last modified September 2, 2024, https://philipharland.com/Blog/?p=21830.
Ancient author: Strabo (early first century CE), Geography 17.2.1-3 (link).
Comments: Strabo’s discussion of Ethiopians is much shorter than the preceding survey of Egyptians but nonetheless goes into customs more broadly. Overall, Strabo stresses the hard lifestyle that went along with living in a harsh environment under the beating sun. So the image of a distant people who lived close to the gods (another option for Greeks) is not his focus. Strabo generally seems disinterested in questions about skin-colour even though the term “Ethiopians” itself is an outsider (Greek) designation for people who appear to have “burnt skin.”
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[For Strabo’s preceding discussion of Egyptians, go to this link].
[Harsh environment creates hard lifestyle]
(17.2.1) In the earlier parts of my work I have already said many things about the Ethiopian peoples, so that the description of their country may be said to be included with that of Egypt. In general, the extremities of the inhabited world, which lies alongside the part of the earth that is not temperate and habitable, because of heat or cold, must be defective and inferior to the temperate part. This is clear from the modes of life of the inhabitants and from their lack of human necessities. They indeed live a hard life, go almost naked, and are nomads. Their domestic animals – sheep, goats, and cattle – are small. Their dogs are small though rough and pugnacious. It may be from the natural smallness of the people that men have come up with the idea of pygmies (or: fist-sized people) and fabricated them, because not a single believable person claims to have seen them.
[Diet]
(17.2.2) The Ethiopians live on millet and barley, from which they also make a drink. But instead of olive-oil they have butter and tallow. Neither do they have fruit trees, except a few date-palms in the royal gardens. But some use grass as food, as well as tender twigs, lotus, and reed-roots. They use meats, blood, milk, and cheese.
[Customs and Meroe as capital]
They reverence as gods their kings, who generally stay shut up at home. Their greatest royal seat is Meroe, a city bearing the same name as the island. The island is said to be like an oblong shield in shape. Its size has perhaps been exaggerated: about three thousand stadium-lengths in length and one thousand in breadth. The island has both numerous mountains and large thickets. It is inhabited partly by nomads, partly by hunters, and partly by farmers, and it has mines of copper, iron, gold, and different kinds of precious stones. On the Libyan [west] side it is bounded by large sand-dunes, and on the Arabian [east] side by continuous precipices, and above; on the south side, it is bounded by the confluence of the three rivers, namely the Astaboras, the Astapos, and the Astasobas; and, on the north it is bounded by the next course of the Nile, which extends to Egypt along the previously mentioned windings of the river.
[Dwelling places]
In the cities the dwellings are made of split pieces of palm-wood woven together, or of brick. And they have quarried salt, as do the Arabians. Among the plants, the palm, the persea, the ebony, and the ceratia are found in abundance. And they have, not only elephants to hunt, but also lions and leopards. They also have serpents, the elephant-fighters, as well as many other wild animals. The animals flee for refuge from the hotter and more arid regions to those that are watery and marshy.
(17.2.3) Above Meroe lies Psebo, a large lake containing an island that is rather well settled. And since the Libyans hold the land on the western side of the Nile and the Ethiopians that on the opposite side, it comes to pass that they take turns in dominating the islands and the river-land, one of the two being driven out and yielding place to those who have proved stronger.
[Military equipment and clothing]
The Ethiopians also use bows, which are four cubits long, are made of wood, and are hardened by fire. They also arm the women, most of whom have a copper ring through the lip. They wear sheep-skins, since they have no wool, their sheep having hair like that of goats. Some go naked, or wear round their loins small sheep-skins or girdles of well-woven hair.
[Customs concerning the gods]
They regard as god the immortal being, whom they consider the cause of all things, and also the mortal being, who is without name and not to be identified. But in general they regard their benefactors and royal personages as gods: of these the kings as the common saviours and guardians of all, and special individuals as in a special sense gods to those who have received benefactions from them.
Among those who live near the torrid zone, some are considered atheists, since it is said that they hate even the sun, and revile it when they behold it rising, on the ground that it burns them and carries on war with them, and flee for refuge from it into the marshes. The inhabitants of Meroe worship Herakles, Pan, and Isis, in addition to some other barbaric god.
[Funerary customs]
As for the dead, some cast them into the river, others enclose them in glass and keep them at home. But some bury them around the temples in coffins made of clay. They exact fulfilment of oaths sworn over the dead, and consider them the most sacred of all things.
[Social structures and leadership]
They appoint as kings those who excel in beauty, or in superiority in cattle-breeding, or in courage, or in wealth. In Meroe the highest rank was in ancient times held by the priests, who would actually give orders even to the king, sometimes ordering him through a messenger to die, and would appoint another in his stead. But later one of the kings ended this custom by marching with armed men against the temple where the golden shrine is and slaughtering all the priests. The following is also an Ethiopian custom: whenever any one of the kings is maimed in any part of his body in any way whatever, his closest associates suffer the same thing, and they even die with him. So these men guard the king most carefully. This will suffice on the subject of the Ethiopians.
[For Strabo’s subsequent discussion of Libyans, go to this link].
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Source of translation: H.L. Jones, Strabo, 8 volumes, LCL (Cambridge, MA: HUP, 1917-28), public domain (passed away in 1932), adapted by Harland.