Aethiopica

Helidorus of Emesa's An Ethiopian Romance is an enthralling read from the ancient world. Telling the story of the "white" Ethiopian Charicleia and her love, Theagenes, a Greek, it features a series of ordeals and tribulations that finally culminates in their matrimonial union in Meroe, capital of the "Ethiopians" (in this case, really the Kushites or Nubians). Divine intervention and fate see to it that Theagenes and Charicleia's foreseen union comes to fruition. But along the way they survive pirates in the Mediterranean, bandits in the Nile Delta, and machinations of foes and others in Delphi, Memphis, and, most dramatically, in Meroe where Charicleia's royal parents reunite with their lost progeny. Much of the novel actually consists of various characters explaining their backgrounds in long dialogues. For instance, Calasiris, the Egyptian high priest of Memphis, tells Cnemnon of his past travels and travails in a long conversation inside the home of Nausicles, a Greek merchant of Naukratis.

The most intriguing aspect of this novel to this blog, however, is its possible influence on Pauline Hopkins and the hidden city of Telassar in Of One Blood. In Hopkins's novel, the descendants of Meroe have established a utopian hidden city, but one in which monotheism appears to be the dominant faith. Nonetheless, her utopian ancient black civilization must owe something to the fabulous and utopian "Ethiopia" of Helidorus. Indeed, there are even similarities between the main characters: Reuel and Charicleia both possess birthmarks that prove their royal heritage and rightful place on the throne. 

Moreover, like Reuel, Charicleia is also "fair-skinned" and "passing" as "white" to those around her. Yet each are bound by ancestry and destiny to return to Ethiopia, although divine providence in the imagination of Hopkins is decidedly Christian. Both Charicleia and Reuell are also endowed with special abilities or powers. The former possesses a gem that protects her from fire while Reuel's mastery of mesmerism and the occult allow him to "raise the dead" (something also accomplished by an Egyptian mother who uses sorcery to force her deceased son to speak). Perhaps even the "hoodoo" and Vodou elements in the Hopkins novel have their equivalent in the "science" of Calasiris and other Egyptian characters, as well as the constant presence of the deities in dreams, visitations, and temple offerings. 

In addition to the parallels between Reuel and Charicleia, the dichotomy of a wondrous, noble Ethiopia ruled by a benevolent king versus the tyranny of the Persian empire suggests another similarity between the novels: "Ethiopia" as a utopian alternative to the oppressive central power of the day. In Hopkins time, African Americans faced an oppressive empire in the form of US Jim Crow while Africa was carved into European colonies. "Ethiopia" as utopia is biblical prophecy in the Ethiopianism of Hopkins, but it also reaches back into pre-Christian Greek notions of Ethiopia as "blameless" or ideal. It's exotic, remote, attributed with the origins of the Nile and Egypt (Calasiris himself studied in Ethiopia), and led by a wise and judicious monarch.

The gymnosophists consulted by Hydaspes may have been inspired by India, but they bring to mind the council consulted by Reuel in Of One Blood, and through their wisdom human sacrifice in Meroe is terminated. In short, the rulers of Meroe are wise, generous, and the ideal leaders. Their Ethiopia is filled with emeralds, gold, African fauna, exotic spices, and access to the luxuries of India and Arabia. Even the Greeks must recognize this African civilization's grandeur as exoticism meets utopia in Helidorus's eyes. Hopkins was surely influenced by this perception of ancient Ethiopia and, reinterpreting it through the lens of African American Ethiopianist rhetoric, modernized it as a redemptive tale for Black America. Tellasar, with the return of its king, will become Ethiopia stretching her hands unto God. 

Maternal Impression, Preformationism, and Outdated Science

Maternal impression was one of those crazy theories concocted in Greco-Roman times to explain the discrepancy that may emerge between a child and the parents. Rooted in the theory that in the act of conception, whatever the mother was looking at will influence how the offspring will appear, the notion of maternal impression was commonly cited by Roman male writers to explain their "discolored" children with their wives, a joke about elite Roman women sleeping with black, or, "Ethiopian" slaves (Thompson's Romans and Blacks contains several delightful anecdotes of Roman-Latin writings on the theme of white aristocratic, elite women engaging in sex with low, black slaves working in the stables, partly because the very notion was considered absurd). Like the ludicrous theory held by some (such as Herodotus) that "Ethiopians" (dark-skinned Indians and Africans) had black semen like the color of their skin, which Aristotle discounted, the notion of maternal impression was used in what some allege is the world's first passing novel, Aethiopica, rediscovered in Europe in the 16th century (read wiki). In a 1640 painting, as this article from The Root indicates, the notion of the queen of Ethiopia's maternal impression led to her daughter with the black king turning out white because during lovemaking, she gazed upon a statue of Andromeda.

This notion of maternal impression and the extreme cases it was equated with (interracial and cross-racial births) also reminds me of another absurd notion of medieval Europe and alchemy, the idea that an embryo was growing within the male semen, and the woman as merely a vessel for insemination! This absurdity included images drawn that made it seem as if semen included tiny embryos! According to this wiki page, such a theory was called preformationism, the theory that living organisms developed from miniscule fully-developed versions of their later, larger forms. The strangest thing about these theories is that people believed in them for thousands of years in some cases, though mostly before the birth of cell theory and advanced biology.