Candace

From the Catholic Encyclopedia

The name of the Ethiopian queen whose eunuch was baptized by St. Philip (Acts, viii, 27 sqq.). The name occurs in a ruined pyramid near ancient Meroe (Lipsius. Denkmaler, V, 47). Another queen of the same name is mentioned by Strabo (XVII, i, 54), and after him by Dion Cassius (Hist. Rom., LIV, v ); she revolted and waged war against the Romans and was overpowered by Petronius in her capital of Napata, 22 B.C. Pliny (Hist. Nat., VI, 35) informs us that at the time when Nero's explorers passed through Nubia, a Queen Candace was reigning over the island of Meroe, and adds that this name was a title common to all the queens of that country. ". . . quod nomen multis Jam annis ad reginas transiit". The Ethiopia over which Candace reigned, according to Hebrew usage and our authorities, was not the present Abyssinia, as is often claimed, but is to be looked for in the region called by the ancients the island of Meroe at the confluence of the Nile and the Taccasi. The Queen Candace of the Acts may be, and probably is, the same as the one mentioned by Pliny, but we have no direct evidence to assert it as a fact. (See ETHIOPIA.)

R. BUTIN