While the Ethiopian kings were still crowned at Nepata, Meroe gradually
became the real capital and supported at one time four thousand artisans
and two hundred thousand soldiers. It was here that the famous Candaces
reigned as queens. Pliny tells us that one Candace of the time of Nero had
had forty-four predecessors on the throne, while another Candace figures
in the New Testament.[16]

It was probably this latter Candace who warred against Rome at the time of
Augustus and received unusual consideration from her formidable foe. The
prestige of Ethiopia at this time was considerable throughout the world.
Pseudo-Callisthenes tells an evidently fabulous story of the visit of
Alexander the Great to Candace, Queen of Meroe, which nevertheless
illustrates her fame: Candace will not let him enter Ethiopia and says he
is not to scorn her people because they are black, for they are whiter in
soul than his white folk. She sent him gold, maidens, parrots, sphinxes,
and a crown of emeralds and pearls. She ruled eighty tribes, who were
ready to punish those who attacked her.

The Romans continued to have so much trouble with their Ethiopian frontier
that finally, when Semitic mulattoes appeared in the east, the Emperor
Diocletian invited the wild Sudanese tribe of Nubians (Nobadæ) from the
west to repel them. These Nubians eventually embraced Christianity, and
northern Ethiopia came to be known in time as Nubia.

The Semitic mulattoes from the east came from the highlands bordering the
Red Sea and Asia. On both sides of this sea Negro blood is strongly in
evidence, predominant in Africa and influential in Asia. Ludolphus,
writing in the seventeenth century, says that the Abyssinians "are
generally black, which [color] they most admire." Trade and war united the
two shores, and merchants have passed to and fro for thirty centuries.