SNOWDEN, FRANK M., JR, Asclepiades' Didyme , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 32:3 
(1991:Autumn) p.239 

Asclepiades' Didyme 

Frank M. Snowden, jr 

THE EPIGRAMMATIST ASCLEPIADES writes of a certain Didy­
me, "Gazing at her beauty I melt like wax before the fire. 
If she is black, what is that to me? So are coals, but when 

we burn them, they shine like rosebuds" (Anth. Pal. 5.210): 

'tTtKol . .tat w~ KT1po~ 1tap 1tupi, KUAA.o~ opwv. 
d 8£ Il£Aatva, 'tt 'tou1O; Kat &.VepaKe~· aAA' <he Kdvou~ 

eUA'I'WlleV, AUIl1tOucr' w~ p68eat KUAUKe~. 

Alan Cameron has recently argued that Didyme is one of the 
mistresses of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and in support of this 
identification makes inter alia these points: 1 

(1) "In the ordinary way skin black as coal might be thought 
to suggest a negro: a Nubian, say, or Ethiopian. But (as our own 
use of the word illustrates) when applied to skin coloring, black 
is a very relative term, normally implying no more than skin 
significantly darker than the speaker's" (287). 

(2) The name Didyme may be useful in the interpretation of 
the epigram. A not uncommon name, Didyme is "above all an 
Egyptian name." The mention of a dark-skinned Didyme in a 
Hellenistic epigram leads one to expect an Egyptian, also 
suggested by a notice that Ptolemy Philadelphus had a mistress 
named Didyme, "one of the native women" (287, 289). 

(3) It is not necessary to read the poem describing Didyme's 
beauty and defending her dark skin as implying that Didyme 
was Asc1epiades' mistress, but the poem could be interpreted as 
a "perfectly acceptable compliment to the mistress of another 
man-even a king" (291). 

I shall focus primarily on the first of these points: the Greek 
and Roman usage of "black" as applied to dark- and black­
skinned peoples and the relevance of this usage to Didyme's 
ethnic identification. First, however, Cameron's other two 

1 A. CAMERON, "The Mistresses of Ptolemy Philadelphus," G R BS 31 (1990: 
hereafter 'Cameron') 287-92. 

239 



SNOWDEN, FRANK M., JR, Asclepiades' Didyme , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 32:3 
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240 ASCLEPIAOES' OIOYME 

points should be addressed briefly. It should be emphasized at 
the outset that it makes no difference whether Didyme was the 
beloved of Asclepiades or a mistress of Ptolemy Philadelphus. 
The evidence in classical texts strongly suggests, if it does not 
prove, that in associating Didyme's blackness with coal Ascle­
piades was following a common Greco-Roman practice in 
descriptions of Ethiopians. 2 Further, there is no reason to dis­
count the possibility, as Cameron suggests, that Didyme may 
have been the object of Asclepiades' affections. Most of the 
poet's erotic epigrams had heterosexual love as their themes 
and reflected his personal affairs. 3 Why should he have not 
written a few lines expressing his feelings about a beautiful 
woman-a common enough theme in classical poetry? And the 
beautiful woman in this case was obviously one whose skin­
color differed from a preferred Mediterranean hue. It is not 
unlikely that Asclepiades, like others before and after him, was, 
in this poem, articulating a view about women who did not 
meet the Greco-Roman standard of beauty-a not unfamiliar 
tapas in classical authors.4 

As to Cameron's observation that Didyme was "above all an 
Egyptian name," Nubians had been 'natives' of Egypt as early as 
the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom, as attested by the 
"reserve heads" from Giza (ca 2600 R.C.) of a Negro woman and 
her husband, an Egyptian prince, a noble of the court of 
Memphis. 5 Further, Nubians had been employed as soldiers in 
Egypt at various times, as early as the Sixth Dynasty. Troops, 
for example, which had been sent to Asia by Pepy I under the 

2 Cf 246-48 infra, with nn.18f. The African Ethiopians mentioned most 
often in classical texts refer to the dark- and black-skinned inhabitants of the 
Nile Valley south of Egypt (called Kushites by the Egyptians and often 
designated as Nubians by modern specialists). Greeks and Romans also 
located other Ethiopians along the southern fringes of northwest Africa and 
at times closer to the Mediterranean littoral. In this paper in general I use 
"Ethiopians," the word appearing most often in the classical and early 
Christian sources relevant to the focus of this paper, but in some cases I use 
"Nubians" when this designation appears in the specialists cited. 

3 P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford 1972) I 563. 
4 Cf 248f infra., with nn.23f. 
5 J. Vercoutter, J. Leclant, F. M. Snowden, Jr, and]. Oesanges, The Image of 

the Black in Western Art, I: From the Pharaohs to the Fall of the Roman 
Empire (New York 1976: hereafter 'Image') 38, 41, and fig. 7; F. M. SNOWDEN, 
Jr, Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks (Cambridge [Mass.] 
1983: hereafter 'Snowden, Prejudice') 11 with figs. 1 f. 



SNOWDEN, FRANK M., JR, Asclepiades' Didyme , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 32:3 
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FRANK M. SNOWDEN, JR 241 

command of a general Uni, included Nubian contingents.6 Stelae 
(ca 2180-2040 B.C.) portraying black archers with broad noses, 
thick lips, and hair edged with dots show that Nubians and their 
wives, sometimes Egyptian, were established at Gebelein, near 
Thebes, late in the third millennium B.C.7 And the presence of a 
sizable Nubian element in the population of Gebelein is attested 
by the boast of a resident soldier that he "surpassed the whole 
town in swiftness-its Nubians and Upper Egyptians" (AEL 
90). The forty wooden models of black-skinned soldiers found 
in a tomb of a prince (Mesehty) point to the presence of 
Nubian soldiers further north at Assiut about 2000 B.C. (Image 
43 with figs. 10f). Many Nubian recruits upon retirement re­
mained in Egypt, settled on farms, married Egyptian women, 
and apparently enjoyed the status of free citizens; a few attained 
positions of wealth and influence, among them Maiherpri, 
Tuthmosis Ill's fan-bearer, who received the high honor of 
burial in the Valley of the Kings. 8 And the occupation of Egypt 
by the Twenty-fifth Ethiopian Dynasty was one of the periods 
that would have witnessed an increase in the Nubian element in 
the population of Egypt. In short, as a result of long residence in 
Egypt and the New Kingdom's policy of acculturation, many 
Nubians had frequently adopted Egyptian religion, customs, 
and names. 9 

6 CAFP I.2 (1971) 360f; M. LICIITHEIM, Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book 
of Readings in the Old and Middle Kingdoms (Berkeley 1975: hereafter 
'AE L') 19f. 

7 H. G. Fischer, "The Nubian Mercenaries of Gebelein during the First 
Intermediate Period," Kush 9 (1961) 56-80; Image fig. 12. 

8 W. C. HAYES, The Scepter of Egypt: A Background for the Study of the 
Egyptian Antiquities in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I-II (Cambridge 
[Mass.] 1953-59: hereafter 'Hayes') at II 116; CA H2 ILl (1973) 352. 

9 Fischer (supra n.7: 77), in commenting on the Egyptianization of the 
Nubian mercenaries from Gebe1ein, observed that they "equipped themelves 
with funerary stelae made by local craftsmen and ... frequently adopted 
Egyptian names"; cf ]. H. Taylor for Nubian adoption of Egyptian names: 
Egypt and Nubia (Cambridge [Mass.] 1991) 33. Maiherpri, for example, the 
Nubian fan-bearer of Tuthmosis III, was an Egyptian name (CAH2 ILl 352, 
361; Hayes II 116), as was Harsiotef, an early fourth-century B.C. Napatan 
ruler of Nubia (W. Heick and E. Otto, edd., Lexikon der Agyptologie II 
[Wiesbaden 1977] 1021; W. Y. Adams, Nubia: Corridor to Africa [London 
1977] 251, 270). Amenemhet I, the pharaoh of the Twelfth Dynasty, was 
thought to be of partly Nubian descent, the son of a Nubian mother and an 
Upper Egyptian father: AEL 143; Hayes I 171, 143 with fig. 107;]. Leclant, 
"Egypt in Nubia during the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms," in S. Hoch-



SNOWDEN, FRANK M., JR, Asclepiades' Didyme , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 32:3 
(1991:Autumn) p.239 

242 ASCLEPIAOES' OIDYME 

Even if Asclepiades' Didyme refers, as Cameron argues, to a 
mistress of Ptolemy Philadelphus, the poet may very well have 
selected the name to serve a dual purpose-first as a poetic 
pseudonym for the object of his own affections and in addition, 
indirectly, as a reference to Ptolemy's Didyme, the second a 
possibility mentioned by Cameron in his statement (291) that 
the poem would have been a "perfectly acceptable compliment 
to the mistress of another man-even a king.» Further, the 
names of inamoratas in Greek, as in Roman poetry, may well be 
fictive. The name Bombyca, for example, which appears only in 
Theocritus as the name of the darling of a love-sick swain, may 
have been selected, as Gow has suggested, because Theocritus 
considered it appropriate for a girl piper (Boll~{n:a, evidently 
derived from a type of flute, the ~61l~'\)~).10 

Turning now to the major thrust of this paper-the classical 
usage of "black" as applied to dark-skinned peoples and its 
relevance to the identity of Asc1epiades' Didyme, I should 
emphasize that Greeks and Romans frequently noted the 
respects in which peoples darker than themselves differed from 
one another; and the blackest of these-Africans from the 
south of Egypt and the southern fringes of northwest 
Africa-they designated as Ethiopians and accurately portrayed 
in detailed descriptions and strikingly realistic portraits. As early 
as the second millennium B.C. artists on the islands of Crete and 
Cyprus, in mainland Greece from the sixth century B.C. onward, 
and later in many parts of the Greco-Roman world depicted 
many individuals with various combinations of dark or black 
skin, woolly or tightly coiled hair11-traits used by anthro­
pologists today in classifications of Negroid peoples. The Ethi­
opian's blackness became proverbial and gave rise to the ex­
pression A lSlona crIlTtXHV. That Ethiopians were considered as 
blacker than other dark-skinned peoples is clearly illustrated by 
Manilius' color scheme (4.722-30), in which Ethiopians were 
described as the blackest; Indians, less sunburned; Egyptians 
mildly dark; and finally the Moors: a gradation frequently noted 
elsewhere in classical texts. 

field and E. Riefstahl, edd., Africa in Antiquity I: The Essays (Brooklyn 1978) 
64. 

10 A. S. F. Gow, ed., Theocritus (Cambridge 1950) II 199. 
11 Image passim; for Negroes in the art of Cyprus 1900-1300 B.C. see V. 

Karagcorghis, Blacks in Ancient Cypriot Art (Houston 1988) 8-13, figs. 1-4. 



SNOWDEN, FRANK M., JR, Asclepiades' Didyme , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 32:3 
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FRANK M. SNOWDEN, JR 243 

Written records leave no doubt about the physical character­
istics of the Ethiopians with whom Greeks and Romans were 
familiar, and often call attention to the intensely black skin and 
woolly hair of Ethiopians-characteristics regarded as their 
most typical physical traits. Ethiopians are black and flat-nosed 
in Xenophanes B 16 Diels-Kranz; black, with the woolliest hair 
of all mankind in Herodotus (7.70); black, flat-nosed, and 
woolly-haired in Diodorus (3.8.2); and in the Moretum (31-35) 
they are described with the detail and accuracy of modern 
anthropological classifications of the so-called Negroid type. 
Classical writers took considerable pains to call attention to the 
proverbial blackness of Ethiopians and the fact that their pig­
mentation differed in intensity from that of other dark-skinned 
peoples. Though Egyptians were often described as dark or 
black, the fact that they were lighter than Ethiopians and also 
not as woolly-haired was frequently noted. Some Egyptian 
pirates in the region of the Nile Delta were described as black­
skinned, not absolutely black but resembling a half-breed Ethi­
opian (Ach. Tat. 3.9.2). The inhabitants of the area near the 
Egyptian-Nubian boundary were said by Flavius Philostratus 
(VA 6.2) to be not fully black, not as black as Ethiopians, but 
blacker than Egyptians. The people who lived in the regions 
around Meroe were deeply black in color and were pure Ethi­
opian (Ka't(XlCOpws ... /lEA-aVEs 'ta XPw/la'ta Kal1tpw'tws Ai8io1tEs 
aKpa'tol: Ptol. Geog. 1.9.7). That the pigmentation of Egyptians 
was seen as lighter than that of Ethiopians is also attested by the 
adjective subfusculi, which Ammianus Marcellinus (22.16.23) 
chose to describe Egyptians. The emphasis on the intensity of 
the Ethiopian's blackness, as compared with the Egyptian's 
lighter hue, appears in the Acts of Peter in a description of a 
female demon as "most Ethiopian, not Egyptian, but altogether 
black" (in aspectu Ethiopissimam, neque Aegyptiam sed totam 
nigram).12 

The Greco-Roman practice of using Ethiopians as a yardstick 
for measuring not only the color but also the hair of colored 
peoples is illustrated by an emphasis on the contrast between 
the woolly hair of Ethiopians and the 'non-woolly hair' of dark-

12 Actus Petri cum Simone in R. A. Lipsius and M. Bonnet, Acta 
Apostolorum Apocrypha I (Leipzig 1891) 70; cf B. G. Trigger, "Nubian, 
Negro, Black, Nilotic?" in Hochfield and Riefstahl (supra n.9) 27: "On the 
average, between the Delta ... and the Sudd of the Upper Nile, skin color 
tends to darken from light brown to what appears to the eye as bluish black." 



SNOWDEN, FRANK M., JR, Asclepiades' Didyme , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 32:3 
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244 ASCLEPIADES' DIDYME 

skinned Egyptians and Indians. Some Indians were said to be 
blacker than all other peoples except Ethiopians (Arr. Anab. 
5.4.4); those south of the Ganges were described as burned by 
the sun but not so black as Ethiopians (Plin. [-IN 6.70). Southern 
Indians resembled Ethiopians in color; northern Indians, the 
Egyptians-but, Strabo adds (15.1.13), though southern Indians 
resembled Ethiopians in color, they were similar to other 
Indians in countenance and hair because hair does not curl or 
become woolly in Indian climates. Similarly, Arrian's observa­
tions (Ind. 6.9) emphasized the differences between Ethiopians, 
Indians, and Egyptians: southern Indians resemble Ethiopians in 
that they are black (JlEAavEC;) but they are not so flat-nosed 
(crtJlol) or woolly-haired (ouAoKpaVOt) as Ethiopians, whereas 
northern Indians are physically more like the Egyptians. The 
Ps.-Aristotelian Physiognomonica (812af) describes both Egyp­
tians and Ethiopians as o.yav JlEAavEC;, but mentions only Ethi­
opians, not Egyptians. In other words, JlEAac; and niger 
commonly referred to the deep black of the Ethiopian's skin; 
but, as the evidence demonstrates, these color-words also 
evoked in the Greek and Roman mind other physical charac­
teristics of Ethiopians, especially the hair, and hence were in 
themselves frequently a kind of shorthand equivalent of 
'Ethiopian'-a practice not unlike that of later generations of 
whites who have used 'blacks' as the equivalent of Negroid 
types. 

Aeschylus' use of a multiple comparison to describe the 
appearance of the Danaids provides an example of the pains 
sometimes taken to identify precisely the physical features of 
darker peoples, in this instance apparently a mixed black-white 
type. The Danaids describe themselves as a black sun-smitten 
race (Supp. 154f: JlEAaVer<; T)AtOK'turrov).13 Aeschylus mentions 
also differences in form (496: JlOp<pi)c; ... <pucrtC;) and, hence, 
apparently conceived of the Danaids as physically different 
from their cousins, who are described simply as black (719f: 
o.VbPEC; ... JlEAaYXlJlOt<; YUlOUcrt; 745: JlEAa'YXlJlCP cruv cr'tpa't0). To 
Pelasgus (279-85) the Danaids seemed to have the appearance 
of Libyans, or inhabitants of the Nile, or the images of women 
carved by Cypriot craftsmen, or nomad camel-riding neighbors 

13 The nomenclature of certain northwest African peoples illustrates another 
example of classical efforts to describe a mixed black-white people: 
Melanogactuli (black Gactuli), Lcukacthiopcs (white Ethiopians), and 
Libyoaethiopes (Libyan Ethiopians). 



SNOWDEN, FRANK M., JR, Asclepiades' Didyme , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 32:3 
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FRANK M. SNOWDEN, JR 245 

of the Ethiopians, or flesh-devouring Amazons. The precise 
physiognomonical intent of this multiple comparison is not 
certain, although the image is illuminated somewhat by a 
tradition of African Amazons who lived near the western 
Ethiopians (Diod. 3.53.4) and especially by evidence of an 
Ethiopian clement in the population of Cyprus. Aeschylus' 
inclusion of images by Cypriot craftsmen suggests that he may 
have been aware of the presence of Ethiopians in Cyprus noted 
by Herodotus and attested by statues of Negroes, dated about 
560 B.C., found at Ayia Irini.14 And it is tempting to imagine that 
Aeschylus may have known of similar statues of mulatto 
women, descendants of Ethiopians and Cypriot women in the 
employ of Amasis during his occupation of Cyprus. 

Cameron is correct in his observation concerning 'black' as a 
relative term, but when he states that the adjective implies "no 
more than skin significantly darker than the speaker's," he 
overlooks substantial evidence extremely important for the in­
terpretation of Didyme's blackness. In the first place, it is often 
possible to determine from a specific context when people 
described simply by color-terms, even without any other 
ethnic identification, are intended as Ethiopians. And, secondly, 
Asclepiades' juxtaposition of !lEAatVa and av9paK£<; calls 
attention to the Greco-Roman practice of particularizing the 
intensity of an Ethiopian's blackness by comparisons or 
associations of his color with the blackness of coal, pitch, night, 
or crows. 

I turn, first, to the use of !lEAW;, niger, and similar words as 
equivalents of Ai9(o'l'. Several references to the descendants of 
black-white racial mixture, for example, either indicate or imply 
that color words served as the equivalents of 'Ethiopian'.15 
Descriptions of and references to Memnon also point to a sim­
ilar equivalency. In describing the death of Memnon, Philos­
tratus states (Imag. 2.7) that Memnon, coming from Ethiopia, 

14 For an Ethiopian element in the population of Cyprus see lIdt. 7.90 and 
2.182, which reports that Amasis (569-525 B.C.) was the first conqueror of 
Cyprus, where stone sculptures of Negroes have been found (dated ca 560 
B.C.), probably representing blacks in the employ of Amasis during his 
occupation of the island. For the stone figures from Ayia Irini sec 
SwCyprusExp II (Stockholm 1935) ccxxxix, figs. 2-6, nos. 1095,1228. 

15 Arist. Gen. An. 1.18.722a, HA 7.6.586a; Antig. Car. Mirabilia 112 (122), in 
O. Keller, Rerum Naturalium Scriptores Graeci Minores (Leipzig 1877) 27; Ar. 
Byz. Historia animalium epitome 2.272, in S. Lambros, cd., Supplementum 
Aristotelicum I.1 (Berlin 1855); Plut. Mor. 563A. 



SNOWDEN, FRANK M., JR, Asclepiades' Didyme , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 32:3 
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246 ASCLEPIADES'DIDYME 

seems to inspire terror among the Achaeans, for blackness had 
hitherto been only a myth (npc> yap 'tOU M£Jlvovo<; Jlu80<; Ot 
Ai8ion£<;). Memnon is in some cases described as M emnon 
Aethiops (Catul1. 66.52), at other times as Memnon niger. 16 

Claudian (Cons. Stil. 1.265) apparently had Ethiopians in mind in 
referring to Memnon's troops as nigra agmina, as does Lucan 
(10.303) in describing the inhabitants of Meroe, situated be­
tween the Fifth and Sixth Cataracts, as nigris Meroe fecunda 
colonis. Paralleling an antithesis of the white and Negroid heads 
of Janiform plastic vases, frequent racial contrasts between 
white northerners and black southerners (often Scythians and 
Ethiopians) in the widely-accepted environment theory also 
point in the direction of an "Ethiopian-black" equivalence, 
attested as well by the notes of scholiasts and lexicographers. 17 

Further, the degree or intensity of blackness is most im­
portant in determining the precise meaning of 'black' in a par­
ticular context and whether a color-term is the equivalent of 
Ai8io'l'-a point especially relevant in the case of Didyme. The 
characteristic or special blackness of Ethiopians is frequently 
suggested by the objects appearing in various images and com­
parisons used to particularize the color of the skin and to sug­
gest its intensity. Some of the objects so employed appear in 
Martial's description of a super-black woman (1.115.4f): quan­
dam .. , nocte nigriorem formica, pice, graculo, cicada. Al­
though the word 'Ethiopian' does not appear in the epigram, the 
intensity of the blackness expressed by the objects Martial 
chooses for his comparison makes clear that he is describing an 
Ethiopian; the woman is nigerrima. Parenthetically, Martial's 
reason for including a cicada in this context is strikingly 
explained by Meleager's reference (Anth. Pal. 7.196.4) to a 
cicada's "Ethiopian color" (Ai8io1t(x ... Xpu)'ti). Variations of 
Martial's imagery for blackness, without using the word 
Ethiopian, appear in other contexts with undoubted reference 

16 Sen. Ag. 212; Verg. Aen. 1.489; Ov. Am. 1.8.3f; cf Manilius 1.767: 
Auroraeque nigrum partum. 

17 Lin Callimachi hymn as 6.11a (ed. R. Pfeiffer [Oxford 1953] II 77): 'too<; 
JlEA.aVa<;] 'tOu<; Aieio1ta<;; L in Luciani Dialogos marinas 15.4 (ed. H. Rabe 
[Leipzig 1906] 268): JlEA.aVa<; aVepc01tOu<; EcOpOOV] (, yap No'to<; a1tO At~uTl<; 
1tVEEt, [yea ohcoUOt Aieio1t£<;; Zonaras Lexicon I (cd. J. A. H. Tittmann 
[Leipzig 1808] 68): Aieimv] (, JlEA.a<;; Lin juvenalem Vetustiora 15.49.1d (ed. P. 
Wessner [Leipzig 1941] 229): nigra tibicine: Aethiope. 



SNOWDEN, FRANK M., JR, Asclepiades' Didyme , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 32:3 
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FRANK M. SNOWDEN, JR 247 

to Ethiopians. VUK-rlXPOOs and nocticolor, 18 in one instance 
applied to Memnon, were at times the equivalents of Ethiopian. 
"Blacker than darkness and pitch" was another expression used 
of those who were extremely black.19 

Several descriptions of North African Ethiopians provide 
further parallels to Martial's comparison. A black slave from 
Hadrumetum is described as pitch-black (Anth. Lat. I 183.2, 
piceo ... corpore ... niger). In praising a famous black charioteer, 
Luxorius of Carthage recalls not only Martial's use of night, but 
also the largely Roman tradition of a black Memnon. Describing 
the charioteer as having the swiftness of Aeolus and Zephyrus, 
and the color of night, his mother, the tribute continues: "Mem­
non, though a son of Dawn, fell at the hands of the son of 
Peleus .... Never will there be born an Achilles who will surpass 
you. Memnon you are in appearance, but in fate you are not."20 
In his account of the victory of Justinian's general John Troglita 
over rebellious Moors, Corippus states (Johan. 6.92ff) that all 
the captives were not of the same color, but that some were 
black as crows.21 

Didyme was not simply black or dark as an Egyptian: Ascle­
piades a~sociates her color with coal (&VepaKE~). That coal was 
one of t le objects regularly employed in classical imagery in 
descriptons of Ethiopians is dramatically illustrated by the 
following lines from a Romano-African epigram (Anth. Lat. I 
182): corvus carbo cinis concordant cuncta colori. quod legeris 
nomen, convenit: Aethiopis. In light of the black-Ethiopian 
equivalencies outlined above and of the context of the Didyme 

18 Ps.-Callisthenes 83.6, in W. Kroll, Ilistoria Alexandri Magni I (Berlin 
1926); Gel\. N A 19.7.6. 

19 Appendix Pro7Jerbiorum 3.84 (=C PC I 432): M£A<lV't£pO<; 1;6<po\) Kat 
M £A.aV't£pov 1ttmJT]<;' 'twv Ka9' U1t!:p~oAi]v IlQ.l.£Aaall£VWV. 

20 Anth. Lat. I 293 (=M. Rosenblum, Luxorius: A Latin Poet among the 
Vandals [New York 1961J 114f no. 7). Rosenblum (181£) points out that the 
details provided about the charioteer show that he is "clearly a Negro." It is 
worth noting that one of the horsemen in the Carthaginian Mosaic of the 
Ilorsemen from the imperial period is a Negro easily identifiable from his 
hair and nose:]. W. Salomonson, La Mosaique aux chevaux de l'antiquarium 
de Carthage (=EtArchlnstNeerIRome 1 [The Hague 1965]) 95f with TabL 4 
(LVIII, 2, fig. 8). For the traditions of an Asian and African provenance of 
Memnon, and for Memnon as black in the Roman period, see my Blacks in 
Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Creco-Roman Experience (Cambridge [Mass.J 
1970: hereafter 'Snowden, Blacks') 151 ff. 

21 For Ethiopian military activity in northwest Africa see Snowden, 
Prejudice 31-34. 



SNOWDEN, FRANK M., JR, Asclepiades' Didyme , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 32:3 
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248 ASCLEPIADES'DIDYME 

epigram, I agree with Sarah Pomeroy's view that the woman 
whose beauty is the subject of Asclepiades' tribute was 
Ethiopian. 22 Didyme was clearly Aethiopissima, neque Aegyptia 
sed tota nigra, to adapt the phraseology of the Acts of Peter 
(supra n.12). Although Asclepiades mentions only Didyme's 
color, clearly particularized by the poet's association of black 
with coal, a point that I have made above should be em­
phasized: color-terms alone were often used as the equiv­
alents of 'Ethiopians' and evoked in the Greek and Roman mind 
other Ethiopian physical characteristics, especially hair. Hence, 
Didyme's hair may also have been as tightly curled as that of 
Philaenion, another Ethiopian, whose beauty was admired by 
Philodemus (Anth. Pal. 5.121): "May I love such a Philaenion, 
golden Cypris, until I find another more perfect." Philaenion is 
dcscribed as black and with hair more curled than parsley, two 
of the physical traits considered by Greeks and Romans as the 
most characteristic features of Ethiopians. 

Furthermore, it appears that by paying his tribute to the 
beauty of an Ethiopian woman Asclepiades associated himself 
with a Grcco-Roman tradition that rejcctcd color as a standard 
for judging beauty (and, in a broadcr context, as a critcrion for 
cvaluating individual worth). Greeks and Romans, like many 
othcr peoples, had narcissistic canons of physical beauty (what 
H. Hoctink describes as a somatic norm image).23 Lovers in 
classical literature in general stated a preference for a middle 
point bctween their own Mediterranean complexion and that of 
the extremely fair Germans and dark-skinned Africans.24 As 

22 S. Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra 
(New York 1984) 55. 

23 H. Hoetink, The Two Variants in Caribbean Race Relations: A Con­
tribution to the Sociology of Segmented Societies, tr. E. M. Hookyaas (New 
York 1967) 120: "the complex of physical (somatic) characteristics which are 
accepted by a group as the norm and ideal." 

H By failing to consider all the relevant evidence, some scholars (e.g. D. S. 
Wiesen, "Juvenal and the Blacks," CIMed 31 [1970J 132-50) have read a non­
existent anti- black bias into Greek and Roman statements of preference for a 
Mediterranean complexion. But there is no need to import pejorative elements 
into such preferences, which represent an ethnocentrism characteristic of 
many peoples (see supra n.23). Some twentieth-century commentators (influ­
enced perhaps by some modern attitudes toward black-white marriages, 
which in the United States were illegal in many states until the Supreme Court 
ruled in Loving vs Virginia [1967] that the state's miscegenation law was 
unconstitutional) find it surprising that interracial unions were not uncom­
mon in the ancient Mediterranean world and that statements of preferences 



SNOWDEN, FRANK M., JR, Asclepiades' Didyme , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 32:3 
(1991:Autumn) p.239 

FRANK M. SNOWDEN, ]R 249 

early as the fifth century B.C., however, Herodotus, the first 
European to express an opinion about the physical appearance 
of Ethiopians, described them (3.20) as the most handsome men 
on earth. Dio Chrysostom's discourse on beauty emphasized 
(21.16£) the subj ectivi ty of classical narcissistic criteria and raised 
the question whether there was not a foreign type of beauty 
just as there was a Hellenic type. Sextus Empiricus (Math. 11.43) 
noted that men differed in definitions of beauty: Ethiopians 
preferred the blackest and most flat-nosed; Persians, the 
whitest and most hooked-nosed; and others considered those 
intermediate in features the most beautiful. Others, like 
Philodemus (A nth. Pal. 5.121) and Martial (1.115.4f), rejecting 
the prevailing norm image, did not hesitate to extol the beauty 
of blackness. 

And there were still others who rejected prevailing Mediter­
ranean criteria of beauty, although it is not possible to deter­
mine from the context the precise shades of 'dark' or 'black' pre­
ferred. It is important and relevant, however, to note that the 
preferences expressed show clearly that the Mediterranean 
somatic norm image was by no means universally accepted. 
The lovesick swain in Theocritus (l d. 10.16-29), for example, 
reminds those who call his Bombyca sunburned that to him she 
is honey-brown and charming; he adds that a violet is dark 
(IlEAav) but among the first flowers chosen for nosegays. Vergil 
(Eel. 2.16ff, 10.37ff) explains a preference for dark (juscus) 
Amyntas by pointing out that violets and hyacinths are dark 
(nigra) and warns the fair (candidus) Alexis not to have too 
much faith in his color, because white privets fall but dark 
(nigra) hyacinths are picked. Ovid's Sappho tells Phaon that 
Andromeda, dark (fusca) with the hue of her native Ethiopia, 
captured Perseus by her beauty (Her. 15.35-38). 

Another aspect of the classical tradition relating to the inconse­
quence of color was the view that excellence is found among all 
peoples, regardless of color. Although the Didyme epigram, in 
the spirit of those before and after him who rejected the pre­
vailing norm image, is limited to a judgment of beauty, 
Asclepiades may have also had in mind a broader aspect of the 
Greco-Roman tradition-the inconsequence of color as a criter­
ion for evaluating individual worth. Menander (fr. 612 Koerte2 

for dark- or black-skinned women were not unusual in classical literature. Sec 
Snowden, Prejudice 73-82, 94-97, 134ff with n.57. 



SNOWDEN, FRANK M., JR, Asclepiades' Didyme , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 32:3 
(1991:Autumn) p.239 

250 ASCLEPIADES'DIDYME 

= CAF III 157) maintained that natural bent, not race, deter­
mines nobility, and it makes no difference whether one is 
Scythian or Ethiopian. Agatharchides (GGM I 118) notes that 
success in battle depends not upon color but upon courage and 
a knowledge of military science. An epitaph of the third 
century, found at Antinoopolis in Egypt, contrasts the black 
skin of a slave darkened by the rays of the sun with his soul 
blooming with white flowers. 25 The sixth-century poet 
Luxorius, in a tribute to the famous black animal-fighter Olym­
pius, uses an ancient symbolism-'black', in a society with a 
somatic norm image of Mediterranean 'white'-to emphasize 
the inconsequence of color in evaluating men (Anth. Lat. I 353). 
It is Olympius' strength and skill in the amphitheater, not his 
color, that matters. In rejecting the prevailing Carthaginian 
somatic norm image, Luxorius claims that Olympius is not han­
dicapped by his blackness and is as beautiful in the great love 
the people have for him as another, handsome without 
strength, is ugly. Luxorius' epitaph for Olympius concludes, 
"the fame of your glory will live ever after you and Carthage 
will always remember your name.» 26 

An adaptation of the classical rejection of the somatic norm 
image and the recognition of Ethiopian beauty appears in 
Origen's exegesis of the "black and beautiful maiden» of the 
Song of Songs 1.5. 27 The mystery of the church arising from the 
Gentiles and calling itself black and beautiful, Origen wrote, is 
adumbrated in a symbolic union of the spiritual law (Moses) and 
the church (the Ethiopian woman)-a foreshadowing of the 
universal church.28 The superficial meaning of the bride's 
words, "I am black and beautiful» in the Song of Songs, 
according to Origen (2.360), is that the bride is black in com­
plexion but, having both natural beauty and beauty acquired by 
practice, she should not be reprimanded. Origen explains 
further how the bride can at the same time be black and fair 
without whiteness. She has repented of her sins and conversion 
has bestowed beauty upon her, and he adds, showing the ap­
plicability of the passage to all men, "If you repent, your soul 

25 E. Bernard, Inscriptions mitriques de I'Egypte greco-romaine (=Annales 
litteraires de l'Universite de Besan(on 98 [Paris 1969]) 143-47. 

26 Anth. Lat. I 354.13f: vivet fama tui post te longat'va decoris atque tuum 
nomen semper Karthago loquetur. 

27 Septuagint: ~O .. atva ci.~\ 1(0.\ 1(0./...1,; Vulgate: nigra sum, sed formosa. 

28 Comm. in Canticum Canticorum 2.362, 366£ (GCS VIII 115, 117f). 



SNOWDEN, FRANK M., JR, Asclepiades' Didyme , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 32:3 
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FRANK M. SNOWDEN, JR 251 

will be 'black' because of your former sins but because of your 
penitence your soul will have something of what I may call an 
Ethiopian beauty. "29 And when Origen declares that all whom 
God created He created equal and alike, whether they were 
born among Hebrews, Greeks, Ethiopians, Scythians, or Tau­
rians, he is adapting a formula and familiar pattern of classical 
thought that leaves no doubt as to its meaning and comprehen­
siveness. 30 

29 Hom. in Canticum Canticorum 1.6 (CCS VIII 35-38). 
30 Origen Prine. 2.9.5f, tr. Rufinus (CCS V 169f). The misinterpretation of 

the Greco-Roman somatic norm image has been noted (supra n.23). Similarly, 
some scholars have also seen an anti-black bias in classical and early 
Christian black-white symbolism and have read into ancient texts a non­
existent color prejudice (e.g. P. Mayerson, "Anti-Black Sentiment in the Vitae 
Patrum," HTR 71 [1978] 304-11; cf Snowden, Prejudice 150f n.243). In the 
first place, the classical association of Ethiopians with death and the 
Underworld seems to have been due primarily to a basic tendency of peoples, 
African Negroes included, to equate blackness and evil, especially in the areas 
of human experience concerned with religion and the supernatural. Further, 
research in the social sciences has raised the question whether individuals who 
react negatively to the color black develop an antipathy to dark-skinned 
people and suggests that, though such a reaction is in theory possible, the 
evidence is far from conclusive. Cf K. J. Gergen, "The Significance of Skin 
Color in Human Relations," in]. H. Franklin, ed., Color and Race (Boston 
1968) 112-25, esp. 120f. Greeks in fact considered a fear of the Ethiopians' 
color a childish superstition. Agatharchides (De Mari Erythraeo 16, CCM I 
118), for example, points out that Ethiopians do not astonish Greeks because 
of their blackness and their different physical appearance: such fears cease at 
childhood. As to the misinterpretation of early Christian black-white symbol­
ism, some scholars have taken into consideration only the demonological 
contexts and have overlooked exegetical interpretations that were much 
broader in scope than the limited demonological references, and set forth a 
coherent body of doctrine in which Ethiopians became an important symbol 
of Christianity'S ecumenical mission. By choosing the classical black-white 
imagery and by adapting familiar patterns of thought, Origen and others after 
him believed that they could interpret scriptural references more meaningfully, 
and could explicate their messages more convincingly, if they recalled the 
classical associations of blackness with death, evil, ill-omens, and the 
Underworld. In spite of these and similar associations of blackness in 
demonological texts, the emphasis was on skin coloration and no other racial 
characteristics, and there was no stereotypical image of Ethiopians as the 
personification of demons or the devil. Nor was there a fixed concept of black 
as evil or unworthy of conversion, but, on the contrary, the Ethiopian 
imagery was used by early Christian writers to emphasize dramatically that 
blacks were summoned to salvation and were welcomed in the Christian 
brotherhood on the same terms as other converts. Nor is there any evidence 
that blacks of the first centuries after Christ suffered in their day-to-day con­
tacts with whites as a result of the metaphorical associations of black-white 



SNOWDEN, FRANK M., JR, Asclepiades' Didyme , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 32:3 
(1991:Autumn) p.239 

252 ASCLEPIADES' DIDYME 

If Didyme, as Cameron suggests, was a mistress of Ptolemy 
Philadelphus, Asclepiades may have thought that by the choice 
of the name of a royal mistress for the tribute in his epigram, he 
was adding special point to his view, shared by others, that 
black beauties were among those who inspired the rejection of 
the prevailing norm image. One final point: how to account for 
the presence of an Ethiopian mistress in the royal court? Our 
sources report that Ptolemy Philadelphus led an army into 
Ethiopia, seized a portion of the country of the black Ethio­
pians, and included in his Great Procession in Alexandria Ethi­
opians carrying objects prized by Egyptians and the 
Ptolemies-tusks of ivory, ebony logs, and vessels of gold and 
silver.31 In light of the reports of Philadelphus' many mistresses 
and his more than ordinary penchant for amorous affairs (Ath. 
576Ef), it is not unlikely that in the course of his Ethiopian ven­
tures he arranged for the presence of some Ethiopian women in 
his court. 

Black-white interracial unions were nothing new in Egypt. As 
early as the Fourth Dynasty, we have seen, a noble of the court 
of Memphis had a Negro wife, whose position in the court was 
equal to that of Egyptian women (supra n.5). In commenting on 
the women in the household of Mentuhotpe II (ca 2060-2010 
B.C.), H. E. Winlock has called attention to the rich brown com­
plexion of Ashayet, a queen in the pharaoh's harem, and to the 
ebony black color of her companion Kemsit. The fondness of 
this pharaoh and his nobles for southern women, in Winlock's 
opinion, accounts for more than a "trace of the brunette com-

symbolism. In sum, in the early church blacks found equality in both 
Christian theory and practice. See Snowden, PrejudIce 82-87, 99-108 with 
references, to which should now be added J. Winkler, "Lollianus and the 
Desperadoes." IllS 100 (1980) 160-65, who makes the important point (162f) 
that black is not the only color appearing in supernatural contexts but that 
there is a "second category of frightening appearance ... pure white skin" and 
"Just as everything in the underworld can be called black, so it can just as 
well be called pallid, bloodless, white." 

31 Diod. 1.37.5; Theoc. I d. 17.87; Ath. 201; E. E. Rice, The Grand Procession 
of Ptolemy Philadelphus (Oxford 1983) 1 and 138-50, for the accuracy of the 
accounts of the Grand Procession by Athenaeus and Callixenus. For the 
activity of Ptolemy Philadelphus in Ethiopia see Snowden, Blacks 126ff; 
Fraser (supra n.3) I 176ff. 



SNOWDEN, FRANK M., JR, Asclepiades' Didyme , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 32:3 
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FRANK M. SNOWDEN, JR 253 

plexion in the Theban aristocracy of 4,000 years ago. "32 The 
mother of Amenemhet I, the first pharaoh of the Twelfth Dy­
nasty, was reported to be the son of a Nubian mother and a 
father from Upper Egypt. 33 The rebellious soldiers of Psam­
metichus I (according to Herodotus 2.30) had no hesitancy 
about seeking Ethiopian wives. Josephus' account of Moses' 
marriage to Tharbis, the daughter of an Ethiopian king (as 
Josephus described the Cushite woman of the Old Testament) 
shows no disapproval or condemnation of the union. 34 King 
Juba II of Mauretania, whose features in some of his busts have 
been considered Negroid,35 was first married to Cleopatra, the 
daughter of Antony and Cleopatra. Classical writers who had 
occasion to mention black-white racial mixture-as illus­
trations of the transmission of physical characteristics, as evi­
dence of adultery, or for any other reason-included nothing 
resembling later strictures on black-white unions. 36 In such a 
milieu and in a country with a long history of black-w hite racial 
mixture, the presence of Ethiopian mistresses in a royal court 
would not be singular. 

We have no knowledge of the family histories of the dark and 
black women whose beauty is sung in classical poetry or of the 
many mixed black-white types portrayed by Greek and Roman 
artists. Nor are we informed about Didyme's genealogy; but, 
like Verdi's Aida, the daughter of an Ethiopian king, Didyme 
may have also been of royal ancestry, a hostage or captive taken 
in one of Philadelphus' commercial and military Ethiopian 
ventures. 

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY 

july, 1992 

32 H. E. Winlock, Excavations at Deir al Bahri, 1911-1931 (New York 1942) 
130; cf Hayes I 129f. 

33 See AEL and Hayes, supra n.9. 
34 Jos. Aj 2.252f; cf Numbers 12:1-16. 
35 J. Desanges, in Image 265 and figs. 363f. 
36 See Snowden, Prejudice 94-97.