The Ends of Ethiopia in Heliodorus’ An Ethiopian Story

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 6 moves beyond the boundaries of the Roman and Persian Empires to Meroë, the capital of ancient Ethiopia. An Ethiopian Story concludes by looking to an Ethiopian future, based on Greek-Ethiopian cultural hybridity, a striking emphasis on maternity, and female kingship. The novel’s ending thus provides glimpses of a possible alternative to the dominant imperial powers of the eastern Mediterranean. The chapter centers on a close reading of Heliodorus’ tenth and final book, which transposes many elements of the ethnographic tradition about the Nile River Valley—human sacrifice, wondrous commodities from the East, and, perhaps most impressive of all to the novel’s internal audience of spectators, a giraffe—onto the Ethiopian capital. Strikingly, by the third and fourth centuries ce, Meroë had fallen far from the political peak it reached in the Hellenistic period, forced to send tribute to its neighbor Aksum. The juxtaposition of Meroë’s past glory with its present reality suggests the temporal contingency of empire: Meroë, like Alexandria, will also come to an end.