The TRUTH About Black Africans In Ancient Rome (1080p_30fps_H264-128kbit_AAC)

Massive thank you and shout out to Joyelle from the channel Europa Antiqua who has helped me with the research for this video. Link in the description. How common were black Africans in the ancient Roman world? Were there black legionaries and could black people receive citizenship? And how were they viewed by the general Greek and Roman public? Was there any sort of racism? Or is racism and the fixation on skin, hair and eye colour diversity a construct of the modern era? Hello noble ones, welcome back to my channel, this is the Metatron speaking. This is perhaps a bit of a sensitive slash controversial topic but as those of you who have been following me for a while already know, I'm never afraid of discussing controversial topics, like at all. The reason why this is controversial is because there are a lot of people who are trying to bend history, change, cherry pick or completely ignore the historical facts to push forward their own agenda. When this is done to push forward racist ideologies obviously that's a huge no-no. It is also not okay when some people start changing the facts even when they do it to push positive things. Still, there are other ways to do that. A professional historical approach to archaeological and iconographic data just states the facts in the most unbiased way possible. Facts are not facts only if they align with someone's political ideology. With that out of the way, let's see the actual evidence. Was there a strong presence of individuals with black phenotypicality in the Roman and world? How multicultural and multi-ethnic was the ancient world? Well, to address this, we'll analyse the Roman world and surrounding areas within the full spectrum of time, from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age all the way up to the times of the Empire. Let's start by saying that the Mediterranean Sea, the Mediterranean basin seen as a shield barrier, was and is a medieval European perception in relation to the idea of having to defend Europe from Islamic invasions. This isn't absolute, there are exceptions to this, such as Charlemagne and Harun al-Rashid, the Caliph of Baghdad, who had a great diplomatic relationship, but in general, after the Carolingian Age and in the late Middle Ages, we have this contraposition of Christianity on one side and Islam on the other, with the Mediterranean being the line of division, so to speak. In the classical period instead, the Mediterranean is seen as a unifying sea, used and exploited by Greeks and Phoenicians, just to mention a few, to colonise but also to trade. The Mediterranean Sea is a connection to Africa, not a barrier. Now, because of this, the Cretan world had a documented presence of black people, which we find in the Minoic civilisation, and the same can be said also about the Mycenaean world of mainland Greece. We see black individuals in Minoan representations of the Bronze Age, because of the extreme diversity of representations, musicians, warriors, traders etc, we can understand that they had entered fully into the Minoan social fabric. And as we said, we have a very similar situation with the Mycenaean world, starting from the 14th century BC, and by the 9th century, this would be commonplace. When referring to black Africans, the term sub-Saharan is also slightly inappropriate for the period, which is why I'm not using it, as black people weren't only present south of the Sahara Desert, and there is a lot of evidence for that. In Northern Africa we have populations such as the Gaetuli, which was a Romanised name for an ancient Berber tribe inhabiting the lands called Gaetulia. Documents place Gaetulia in pre-Roman times along the Mediterranean coast, of what is now Algeria and Tunisia, and north of the Atlas. During the Roman period, according to Pliny the Elder, the Gaetuli established themselves south of the province of Mauretania Tingitana, in modern-day Morocco. Now, the Gaetuli were a Berber people, so we've got depigmentation, generally speaking pale skin, some people were blonde, however, the Romans also differentiated within a second group in the same tribe called Melano-Gaetuli, which means black Gaetuli, so they were mixed. Again, a substantial black African presence is documented by the 1st century Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, when he's talking about the African expeditions of the 4th century by Agathocles, the tyrant of Syracuse. And Diodorus Siculus describes the inhabitants of the city of Pheline being as black as the Ethiopians. Something that can really help us increase the level of detail by which we can understand how multi-ethnical the ancient world was is by utilising osteological examinations. Osteology is the detailed study of the structure of bones, skeletal elements, teeth, micro-bone morphology, function, disease, and generally speaking the resistance and hardness of bones, so biophysics. Cranial osteological examinations of Carthaginian cemeteries, but also cemeteries in the Balearic Islands, show again a substantial presence of black individuals. We have the famous sarcophagus of the priestess of Carthago, revealing again a cranium belonging to an individual of mixed origin. Surprisingly enough, a similar situation also happens with Roman burials, all the way up to Roman Britain. In the city of York, two separate osteological examinations in two different burial sites have been carried out, revealing that 32% of the examined skulls on one side and 23% of the examined skulls on the second side belonged to black people. Very important to note is also the fact that Rome will extend its control over the Numidian and Punic world, and by the end of the first century BC, the first emperor, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus, will conquer Egypt. Egypt becoming a province of the Roman Empire has a big impact into the multi-ethnic reality of the empire itself. Egypt was an extremely multi-ethnical reality. It was very varied, so when it became a province of the Roman Empire, it also increased multi-ethnicity within Rome. Ptolemaic Egypt was run by a Macedonian aristocracy, and land owners would have been Macedonians, Greek, Thracians, Galatians, but their people. You didn't only have Egyptians, but you also had a lot of Nubians, not to mention the dynasty of the Black Pharaohs between the 8th and 7th century BC, which must be kept in mind. There is a similar situation when talking about the Berber population called Maori by the Romans, who were the inhabitants of the area called Mauretani. Polybius tells us that they would often mix with populations from other parts of Africa, such as Niger, whom we know were black. All in all, after defeating Carthage and occupying North Africa and effectively establishing the so-called Africa Proconsularis, Rome became multi-ethnical, since this area, as we have seen, was very diverse and had been since the very first stages of the Iron Age. Now, when talking about the ancient Greek perspective, there is an extremely interesting story that comes from the work of Lucian of Samosata, Hermotipus. We are going to read from verse 31. Suppose, Licinius, that an Ethiopian who had never been abroad in his life, nor seen other men like us, were to state categorically in an Ethiopian assembly that there did not exist on earth any white or blonde men, nothing but blacks. Would his statement be accepted? Or would some Ethiopian elder remark, how do you know, my confident friend? Now, the perspective given through this story is very poignant, because it tells us that the Greeks divided humans into three different categories. Now, what these categories were, the ones that I've just translated as whites, blacks and blondes, is sort of part of a debate, so let me justify them. The three terms that we are translating to identify three different phenotypes are Xanthos, this one can be translated as whites, and from the perspective of the ancient Greeks that would mean the Greeks. Melas, this can be translated as blacks, and from the perspective of the ancient Greeks it would mean Ethiopians. Then there is the word Leufkos. The translation of this one is rather complicated, but before I do that, I'd like to underline that I'm specifically using ancient Greek pronunciation, specifically the Lucian pronunciation, and if you want to know more about that, I will leave a link to a video created by my friend Luke, and if you haven't subscribed to both ScorpioMartiano's channel and Polymathy, you totally should. This is just to underline, for those of you who are Greeks and are watching this, I am not using modern Greek pronunciation, which is why you might find a difference, and if you want to know more, link in the description. So, the term Leufkos is translated sometimes as yellow, so it could mean the whites, the black and the yellows, and some people have translated this, in my opinion incorrectly, to mean Asian people. Now there are two reasons why I don't agree with that translation. Reason number one, it's really a recent thing that people started using the term yellow, which is obviously not a good term and shouldn't be used, to mean people of Asia. If we read the travels by Marco Polo, he calls the Chinese white, and we know that all the way up to the 18th century, so 1700s, Catholic missionaries were calling people in Japan white. So, nobody in the medieval period and nobody in the classical period ever called people from Asia yellow. This is based on the anthropological studies of Blumenbach of the 1800s, so it's a very, very modern concept. You can't attach that concept to the ancient Greek people. Secondly, we do know that xanthos is coherently and cohesively used to describe the colour of the hair, so again, blonde hair, of Achilles, it's used for Menelaus, it's used for Helen of Troy, and also for Aphrodite. Not to mention that a great translator such as Thomson's actually uses it and translates it as blonze. So, what do they mean by blonze? In my opinion, with the word blonze in this case, they mean the Nordic type, Northern European type, whether it be Germanic, that kind of complexion. Now, this is very interesting because it would mean that they wouldn't consider the Nordic type, so blonde people, white, just as much as they wouldn't consider black Ethiopians white. Very interesting. Now, we don't have any historical mention of a legionary being black. Now, please keep in mind that when we talk about legionaries, in the majority of cases, we are talking about citizens. Now, there is the very occasional exception to that rule, such as the fully non-citizen, so we should say barbarian, legion that Julius Caesar himself raised in Gallia, but that is an extremely rare situation. In 99.9% of cases, if you were a legionary, you had to be a citizen. We do, however, have mentions and multiple mentions of auxiliary soldiers being black, and that's interesting because, just as a matter of deductive logic, we can then assume that some people did become citizen while being black, and that is because when you would finish your service as a member of an auxiliary troop, if you did everything properly, you would receive the so-called honesta missio, which means that you would be relieved of your military service and you would receive citizenship. So, because of the fact that we know that there were black auxiliary soldiers, it also means that some of these black auxiliary soldiers became citizens, which means that their children would be citizens of Rome. This, however, shouldn't be seen as a typical situation. For example, the famous cartoon made by the BBC that I have already addressed on a separate video that you will find a link in the description below, they show us a mixed family where the officer is a black man who is married to a white woman and therefore you've got a mixed family. That is plausible historically, but it wouldn't have been the norm. It wouldn't have been a very special occasion. In fact, the only case of a documented situation that is the closest to a mixed family is the adoptive son of Herod the Great, whom was from Ethiopia and was black, and the man loved him so much that he actually had a full marble statue made for him. So, does that mean that the Romans weren't racists? No. There is a very famous incident, or should we say infamous incident, that has to do with Emperor Septimus Severus and the fact that he encountered an auxiliary soldier from Ethiopia who was black, and here is what he said. After inspecting the wall near the rampart in Britain, just as he, Severus, was wondering what omen would present itself, an Ethiopian from a military unit, who was famous among buffoons and always a notable joker, met him with a garland of cypress. And when Severus, in a rage, ordered that that man be removed from his sight, troubled as he was by the man's ominous colour and the ominous nature of the garland. If that's not a racist, I don't know what is. With a more complete picture now, we can see that the situation of racism in ancient Rome was relatively similar to how it is right now. Some people were racist, some other people weren't. This is important to respond to those people who say, Oh no, the idea of looking at another person's skin or colour of hair or colour of eyes, complexion, is a modern construct. People and civilizations from the past, they didn't even see these things. That is ludicrous. It's not true. And as you could see, it's easily provable with the sources. Ancient Rome and the ancient world was very multi-ethnical. Some people liked that, some people didn't. So when it comes to becoming officers or receiving important titles, it is possible. We don't really have much to support this idea, although we do have one mention that could be interesting and I'd like to bring forth. There is a famous soldier by the name of Lucius Quietus who was a cavalry auxiliary. We know because we have documentation that tells us that he received citizenship, even became a senator, and was at the end of his career the right arm of Emperor Traianus himself. Now, where was he from? He was from Mauretania. So he was a Mauro. And as we have said on this video, this means that perhaps he was of Berber origin, in which case he would have a pale skin or maybe not. It could have been mixed or it could have been black. All three are plausible. It's never really mentioned, so we don't know. But it is possible that he was black. So all in all, what we learn by reading the actual sources and interpreting them correctly is that in the ancient period the Mediterranean world was connected to Africa, that a lot of people of black skin would be found both in Greece, they would be found within the Roman Republic and Empire, and they would be found in settlements all over northern Africa, which is something important that we need to keep in mind when we try and depict a historically plausible and historically accurate picture of the situation. Also, the approach to racism was different. So in other words, as I was saying before, they would be very similar to how we are now. There were also different perspectives, such as the one that I brought forth having to do with the ancient Greeks. Black Africans existed. They could be soldiers, they could be auxiliary, and they could have had prestigious positions, but they still were a minority, so to speak, when looking at the general population of ancient Europe. All right, noble ones, well, I hope that you enjoyed this video, and if you did, please remember thumbs up, and if you're not yet members of this community, become a noble one, subscribe to my channel for more content from the Metatron. I really hope that you enjoyed it, but let me know what you think in the comments below, and many more videos similar to this one to come in the near future. Thank you very much for watching, and remember, the Metatron has spread his wings. Goodbye.