Andromeda and the
Ethiopian Soul in Black and White
Robert Brophy,
Antiquity used the BlackWhite
contrast in many contexts, visual art, including religion and philosophy. The whiteness of even the black
African's soul was a Christian and perhaps pagan commonplace; so was the beauty
of Andromeda, Crown Princess of Ethiopia, as beautiful, exotic black princess,
or as equally exotic "white Ethiopian";.. The attitude of the ancient author
affected how she was "colored," especially in Heliodorus
(215-75) Aethiopica. This paper argues that the same was true
of the "blackness" of the Ethiopian's soul. The simplistic judgment, black = evil,
white = good, did not hold absolutely of Andromeda, nor of the black African
Christian's soul. Snowden's Blacks
in Antiquity discusses the Christian topos. Philostratus .
Imag.1.29.3 calls Andromeda's portrait "sweet maid and white, and the
Ethiopians are 'sweet' on her amazing, atopos, complexion)." Ach.Tat.3.7.4, "a similar picture of
Andromeda" is "pure, akraton, white."
In Ethiopica 4.8.5, a painting of white Andromeda
makes black Queen Persinna bear a white daughter Charicleia, a painting of Andromeda "stark naked
shaped the embryo to her exact [white] likeness." Persinna
exposed the baby "convinced th[e] color would
lead to adultery" charges. In Eth. 1.2, black pirates think Charicleia a goddess from her "skin of gleaming white,
something quite foreign to Ethiopians." Andromeda is black in earlier Latin
poetry "when the colour problem became an erotic
topos," Diggle p. 80:
Ovid Ars.Am. 2.643 nec suus Andromedae color est objectus; 1.53: Andromedan Perseus
nigris portarit ab indis; & 3.189: Pulla decent niveas: Briseida pulla decebant v. 191-92 Alba decent fuscas;
albas, Cephei, placebas: Sic tibi vestitae pressa Seriphos erat. Heroides
15.35-36: Sappho says my faults don't matter: candida si non sum, placuit Cepheia Perseo/Andromede, patriae fusca colore suae
et
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