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 (Nobadae) 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.

In this way Arabian, Jewish, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman influences spread slowly upon the Negro foundation.  Early legendary history declares that a queen, Maqueda, or Nikaula of Sheba, a state of Central Abyssinia, visited Solomon in 1050 B.C. and had her son Menelik educated in Jerusalem.  This was the supposed beginning of the Axumite kingdom, the capital of which, Axume, was a flourishing center of trade.  Ptolemy Evergetes and his successors did much to open Abyssinia to the world, but most of the population of that day was nomadic.  In the fourth century Byzantine influences began to be felt, and in 330 St. Athanasius of Alexandria consecrated Fromentius as Bishop of Ethiopia.  He tutored the heir to the Abyssinian kingdom and began its gradual christianization.  By the early part of the sixth century Abyssinia was trading with India and Byzantium and was so far recognized as a Christian country that the Emperor Justinian appealed to King Kaleb to protect the Christians in southwestern Arabia.  Kaleb conquered Yemen in 525 and held it fifty years.

Eventually a Jewish princess, Judith, usurped the Axumite throne; the Abyssinians were expelled from Arabia, and a long period begins when as Gibbon says, “encompassed by the enemies of their religion, the Ethiopians slept for nearly a thousand years, forgetful of the world by whom they were forgotten.”  Throughout the middle ages, however, the legend of a great Christian kingdom hidden away in Africa persisted, and the search for Prester John became one of the world quests.