Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/330

SJ4 'HISTORY OF GREECE. and other eminent authors, that they were transmitted JOWL the Nile by Ethiopian colonists from Meroe. Herodotus certainly conceived Egyptians and Ethiopians (who in his time jointly occupied the border island of Elephantine, which he had himself visited) as completely distinct from each other, in race and customs not less than in language, the latter being generally of the rudest habits, of great stature, and still greater physical strength, the chief part of them subsisting on meat and milk, and blest with unusual longevity. He knew of Meroe, as the Ethiopian metropolis and a considerable city, fifty-two days' journey higher up the river than Elephantine, but his informants had given him no idea of analogy between its institutions and those of Egypt; 1 it was the migration of a large number of the Egyptian military caste, during the reign of Psammetichus, into Ethiopia, which first communicated civilized customs, in his judgment, to these southern barbarians. If there be really any connection between the social phenomena of Egypt and those of Meroe, it seems more reasonable to treat the latter as derivative from the former. 2 The population of Egypt was classified into certain castes or hereditary professions, of which the number was not exactly de- fined, and is represented differently by different authors. The priests stand clearly marked out, as the order richest, most pow- and two languages, Egyptians and Arabic language to the north, Nubians and Berber language to the south. (Parthey, ibid.) 1 Compare Herodot. ii, 30-32 ; iii, 19-25; Strabo, xvi, p. 818. Herodotus gives the description of their armor and appearance as part of the army of Xerxes (vii, 69); they painted their bodies: compare Plin. H. N. xxxiii, 36. How little Ethiopia was visited in his time, may be gathered from the tenor of his statements : according to Diodorus (i, 37), no Greeks visited it earlier than the expedition of Ptolemy Philadelphus, ovrug u^eva fyv TU Trepi rove Toirove rovrovf, Kal TravTfXwf iiriKiv6vva. Diodorus, however, is incorrect in saying that no Greek had ever gone as far southward as the frontier of Egypt: Herodotus certainly visited Elephantine, probably other Greeks also. The statements respecting the theocratical state of Meroe and its superior civilization come from Diodorus (iii, 2, 5, 7), Strabo (xvii, p. 822), and Pliny (H. N. vi, 29-33), much later than Herodotus. Diodorus seems to have had no older informants before him, about Ethiopia, than Agatharchides and Artemidorus, both in the second century n. c. (Diod. iii, 10.) 1 "Wcsseling ad Diodor. iii, 3.