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Αἰθίοπες: δίξοι: is this genuine ethnology, or a reminiscencc of the Odyssey? a 23 f. Αἰθίοπας, τοὶ διχθὰ δεδαίαται, ἔσχατοι ἀνδρῶνͅοἱ μὲν δυσομένου Ὑπερίονος, οἱ δ᾽ άνιόντος. The alternatives are not quite mutually exclusive. Hdt. and even the Homeric poet may have had word of the existence of a dark, negroid people, beyond the Euphrates and Tigris. The reality of this race is fully recognized now by ethnologists (cp. Dieulafoy, L'Acropole de Suse, 1890; Keane, op. cit. infra). Rennell (i. 401) regards these Ethiopians of Asia as ‘the people of Makran, Haur, and other provinces in that quarter,’ i.e. the south-east of the empire; and this view is endorsed by Rawlinson and others. The term ‘Burnt-faces,’ Brunetti, or ‘Blacks’ is of course a mere epithet, and Hdt. distinguishes the Ethiopians of Asia and of Africa ethnologically. This distinction reappears nowadays in the division of Homo Aethiopicus into ‘African’ and ‘IndoOceanic’ and modern ethnology reaffirms their ultimate and fundamental identity (cp. Keane, A. H., Ethnology (1896) ch. xi.).
εἶδος: φωνήν: τρίχωμα. Hdt. has here as elsewhere (notably 2. 104) apprehended the chief ethnological tests. But a great extension, or rather an intense specification, would have to be given to the term εἶδος before it could carry all that was requisite (e.g. not merely general shape and appearance, but size, measurements, craniology).
ἰθύτριχες. “Owing to the absence of distinctly woolly hair, marked pro guathism and brachycephaly amongst the low-caste aborigines of the Deccan many ethnologists still deny the piesence of true Negritoes in the peninsula” (Keane, op. cit. p. 254). The remark might apply to the region between the Persian Gulf and the Indns, mutatis mutandis.
κατά περ Ἰνδοὶ ἐσεσάχατο. On the verb, and the tense cp. c. 62 supra. Two differences between the ‘Indian’ and the ‘East-Ethiopian’ equipment (σκευή) are specified, sufficient, one would think, to constitute distinct types: (1) the head-dress; formed of the skin of the upper part of a horse's head, with the ears and mane left on; (2) as shields: the skins of cranes, presumably stretched on frames. So the Nasamonians, στρουθῶν καταγαίων δορὰς φορέουσι προβλήματα, 4. 175. (δορά in both places of bird-skins.) The name of the commander has already been given in c. 65 supra.
κατέχρα. καταχρᾶν with a subject expressed is unusual; it is generally neuter, 1. 164, 4. 118.
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