A CONFUSION OF INDIAS: ASIAN INDIA AND AFRICAN INDIA IN THE BYZANTINE SOURCES

more than one India in articles subsumed under that name in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, in the Greek lexica of Liddell and Scott and Lampe, and in the new Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium; and barely more than a hint in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopadie.2 Historians, dealing with commerce between Rome and the East, however, are aware of several Indias. Warmington, speaking of the so-called trade with "Indians" following the fourth century, states that it "was in reality trade with the Ethiopians and even under Justinian in the sixth century Byzantine subjects visited not India so much as Arabia and Axumite realms (particularly Adulis) and the ignorance now shown about India was truly prodigious."3 As a general statement, Warmington is on the mark, but there remains a confusion in determining specifically what India is meant-Ethiopian, Arabian, or subcontinental India. Not all sources or all scholars agree. Take for example the article "India" in the new Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, where it is stated that "according to Philostorgios, Constantine