An Ancient "Passing" Novel: Heliodorus' Aithiopika

Abstract

In the third century, the figure of the Ethiopian appears to have held a privileged position in discussions of identity. Lucian employs the proverb “to wash an Ethiopian white,” Afiy¤opa smAExein (adversus Indoctum 28, quoted by Snowden 1970.5), to indicate the futility of trying to change a person’s nature, and Origen, quoting Jeremiah, draws upon this same cultural trope to signal the radical consequences of Christian conversion when, through the power of the Word, the Ethiopian will change his skin and the leopard his spots (Jeremiah 13.23). This imagery continued in Christian discourse on conversion; Jerome’s words in fact suggest that he may really have thought that blacks turned white upon baptism: “though it is against nature, the Ethiopian does change his skin . . .” (Epistulae 69.6.7– 8). In the discourse of the period, the blackness of the Ethiopian stood for the intransigent condition of human identity. In this context, Heliodorus’ decision to focus his romance, the Aithiopika, on his white heroine’s rediscovery and recovery of her Ethiopian identity takes on added significance. Through this choice of topic, the Aithiopika explicitly locates its narrative focus on identity and authenticity, on place and displacement within a wider cultural dialogue. The linear plot of Heliodorus’ romance (much complicated in the telling) narrates the birth of a white daughter to the black king and queen of Ethiopia. The queen,