If we pass through the interior of Africa in a southerly direction, beyond the Gætuli, after having traversed the intervening deserts, we shall find, first of all the Liby-Egyptians, and then the country where the Leucæthiopians dwell.
Pliny the Elder
On those shores washed by the Libyan Sea, however, are found the Libyan Aegyptians, the White Aethiopians, and, a populous and numerous nation, the Gaetuli. Then a region, uninhabitable in its entire length, covers a broad and vacant expanse.
Pomponius Mela
The inhabited world according to Herodotus: Libya (Africa) is imagined as extending no further south than the Horn of Africa, terminating in the uninhabitable desert. All peoples inhabiting the southernmost fringes of the inhabitable world are known as Ethiopians (after their dark skin). At the extreme south-east of the continent are the Macrobians, so-called for their longevity.
The Indians are the wisest of mankind. The Ethiopians are a colony of them
Philostratus
A sultan and his forces (right) battling the Abyssinian King and his men (Le Livre des Merveilles, 15th century). Leo Africanus wrote that “olive” complexioned people were among the natives of the kingdoms in the Horn of Africa
designated as Ethiopia the whole of the southern countries towards the ocean
Strabo
White Aethiopians is a term found in ancient Greco-Roman literature, which may have referred to various light-complexioned populations inhabiting the Aethiopia region of antiquity. The exonym is used by Pliny the Elder, and is also mentioned by Pomponius Mela, Ptolemy and Orosius
Senegal:
So who were the White Aethiopians?
