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Macrobii: Aithiopians and Others

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

W. R. Halliday
W. R. Halliday
Affiliation:
The University, Liverpool
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Extract

Mr. Last's very interesting note (Class. Quart. XVII., pp. 35–36) is so ingenious and the Egyptian evidence falls so pat that it deserves to be right, but I very much doubt if it is. In fact the Aithiopians do not stand alone, and the context of their longevity deserves consideration. If that context is recalled, it may appear that ‘to say that the legend was attached by the Greeks to the Aithiopians through their remoteness from the Mediterranean world is no explanation’ is itself a hard saying.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , January 1924 , pp. 53 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1924

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References

1 For the Ὀϕιονίκοι and other classical longlived snake-eaters, see Rohde, , op. cit., p. 219Google Scholar. Thorndike, , History of Magic and Experimental Science II., p. 243Google Scholar, first drew my attention to the connexion between the passage in Roger Bacon (cf. ibid., p. 657) and the Letter of Prester John. I do not think that Bacon copied directly from the twelfth-century version of the Letter of Prester John to which Zarncke, (Abhandl. d. Kgl. Sächs. Gesells. d. Wiss. VII. 913)Google Scholar refers, but the matter was clearly a marvellous commonplace which goes right back to Timokles. This is worth mentioning, because it completely disposes of the theory of Wiener that Bacon is alluding (nearly two centuries before it seems actually to have taken place) to the migration of Gypsies into the countries of Western Europe.