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>Pliny in turn asserts that the place-name "Aethiopia" was derived from one "Aethiop, a son of Vulcan" (the Greek god Hephaestus). He also writes that the "Queen of the Ethiopians" bore the title Kandake, and avers (incorrectly) that the Ethiopians had conquered ancient Syria and the Mediterranean
>"Then, truly, Phaethon sees the whole earth on fire. He cannot bear the violent heat, and he breathes the air as if from a deep furnace. He feels his chariot glowing white. He can no longer stand the ash and sparks flung out, and is enveloped in dense, hot smoke. He does not know where he is, or where he is going, swept along by the will of the winged horses. It was then, so they believe, that the Ethiopians acquired their dark colour, since the blood was drawn to the surface of their bodies. Then Libya became a desert, the heat drying up her moisture." - Ovid
>Aethiopasque: Greek declension, acc. pl., Roman authors believed that the Ethiopians lived in Asia and Africa; suos: the Ethiopians are 'his' because his mother's husband, Merops, was was the king of Ethiopia, husband of Clymene and adoptive father of Phaethon, his wife's son by Helios
>The ancient writer Julius Firmicus Maternus went as far as claiming the whole of Germany was blonde: "If the characters and complexions of mankind are due to the combinations of planets, and the motions of the planets make up men’s traits, as if in paintings: that is, if the Moon makes people fair-skinned, Mars red, Saturn black, why is the whole population of Ethiopia black, of Germany blond, of Thrace red-haired, as though the Moon and Mars had no strength in Ethiopia, and Saturn could not produce dark coloring in Germany or Thrace?" - Matheseos Libri Octo, ii. 1