D. SELDEN How the Ethiopian Changed His Skin Classical Antiquity. Volume 32, Number 2, pages 322–377. ISSN 0278-6656(p); 1067-8344 (e). Copyright © 2013 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions. University of California Press, 2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94704-1012. Aksumite elites electively identified themselves as “black” in relation to the paler integument of other Mediterranean peoples. Prior to the fourth century ce, the proper noun Aithiop´ ıa referred to the area of northern Sudan. Aksum, however, deliberately appropriated the Greek term for its own geopolitical purposes, partly as a way to write itself both into the grand narratives of Graeco-Roman history, where “Ethiopians” recurrently figure as morally “blameless,” as well as—with their conversion to Christianity—into Old and New Testamental eschatologies that consistently position “Ethiopians” as first in the sight of God. This process of self-definition— achieved under the formative gaze of Hellenic, Roman, and Levantine Others—ultimately allowed ’Ityo˙ py¯ a to become a key, if nonetheless still liminal and rogue, player in the post- Constantinian politico-religious arena, in such a way that both economic and cultural capital accrued to the benefit of Aksum. For Erich S. Gruen ε λλεται Αθοψ τ δρμα ατο κα πρδαλις τ ποικλματα ατς; κα μες δυνσεσθε ε ποισαι μεμαθηκτες τ κακ. 1 Ieremias 13: 23 1. I have punctuated the verse differently from how it appears in Rahlfs 2006, the standard, now one-volume edition of the Septuagint. For interrogative ε [= Hebrew ], see Conybeare and Stock 1905, 116n.8; accordingly, we might venture to translate: “Can an Ethiopian (ex)change his skin and a leopard his spots? So shall you be able to fare well when all you know is evil.” In Aramaic, however, the same particle ( ) means “Behold!” which—postulating an Aramaic Vorlage or, in all probability, a Palestinian translator more familiar with contemporary colloquial idiom—would turn the statement into a prediction. Alternatively, then, the passage would run: “Behold, the Ethiopian shall change his skin and the leopard his spots: although what you have learned is evil, you too shall have the ability to fare well”; the reading ε λλεται is not out of the question.