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I saw Frank Snowden once, when he give a distinguished lecture at Howard during the year I worked in the Afro-American Studies department at Howard University. Professor Snowden, Harvard-trained, was and is a legend. No single person has devoted more time to the first hand study of black life in antiquity. Combing through ancient texts in greek and latin, visiting museums around the world, and taking field trips to specific sites in the Roman empire and in the Nile valley, Snowden amassed a collection of photographs, notes, and personal insights which are unmatched anywhere. Always sharp, cantankerous, keen, and committed to the highest standards of scholarship, Snowden worked to debunk the myths of that swirl around about blacks in antiquity. Competitive, fast-moving, singularly brilliant, he does much wider recognition than he has received. Help yourself by reading his works. (wr/griot)

Blacks in the Ancient Greek and Roman World:
An Introduction

Written on the occasion of a program honoring Professor Frank M. Snowden as the recipient of the Library's first Excellence at Howard Award, 1987.

Early Studies

Nineteenth-century studies of blacks portrayed by Greek and Roman artists were limited largely to descriptions of individual objects, and to examples of a particular theme, type, or period. Seldom were art objects related properly to Ethiopians-as blacks were commonly designated by Greek and Roman authors.* It was not until 1929, when Grace H. Beardsley published The Negro in Greek and Roman Civilization: A Study of the Ethiopian Type (Baltimore), that the first detailed study of Negroid types in classical art was made. This important work, however, was devoted primarily to blacks in the Greek world, confining the treatment of blacks in Roman literature and art to nineteen pages. Further, even in interpretations of blacks in Greek art, Beardsley made scant use of the pertinent and widely scattered materials concerning blacks in antiquity which had never been the subject of serious study. The Negro in Greek and Roman Civilization also revealed shortcomings found even in some more recent treatments of blacks in the ancient world: (1) a practice of making general statements about blacks on the basis of a few lines from a single author or, at most, from a few texts without considering the total image of blacks in the ancient world; (2) A tendency to read modern racial concepts into ancient documents and to see color prejudice where none existed; and (3) a failure to consider relevant research in the social sciences pertaining to the origin and nature of color prejudice. In spite of its shortcomings, however, Beardsley's pioneer work demonstrated clearly the need for a much fuller treatment of blacks in antiquity.

Research in the Seventies and Eighties

Research relating to blacks in the Greek and Roman world--especially the collection, analysis, and interpretation of ancient sources--was a time-consuming undertaking. In the first place, there is no single ancient document or source which deals with blacks in antiquity and with the attitude of ancient Mediterranean peoples toward blacks. In fact, the evidence--literary, epigraphical, papyrological, numismatic, archaeological --is widely scattered, covering a period of some three thousand years, from the middle of the third millennium BC to the sixth century AD. Further, the written sources include not only Greek and Roman texts, but also Egyptian and Assyrian documents, the Old Testament and early Christian authors. The search for the iconographic documentation required an examination of countless museum catalogues, archaeological and other specialized publications, as well as a firsthand study of relevant Egyptian, Greek, and Roman collections in museums in the United States, Europe, and Africa.

The appended excerpts from the reviews (Appendixes B, C, and D) of the author's major studies (Appendix A) on blacks in the ancient world comment on the significance of the author's methodology and on the importance of his findings for the proper interpretation of blacks in antiquity. The studies included in Appendix E suggest wide and varied interest in aspects of this research that followed the publication of Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience. The relevance of this volume to The Image of the Black in Western Art, 1: From The Pharaohs to the Fall of the Roman Empire (1976) was stated as follows (p. ix): "The collaboration with Frank Snowden was invaluable. His research in Greek and Roman antiquity antedated our own: for twenty years he had investigated the museums of Europe and America, gathering references to blacks in the classical period. Blacks in Antiquity, published in 1970, presents the sum of his work." Studies of various aspects of blacks in the classical world, written by the author at the request of the editors of both classical and non-classical publications, have appeared in The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Supplementary Volume (1976), African Diaspora: Interpretive Essays (1976), and Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (1981). A chapter on "Africans in Classical Antiquity" in Africans Abroad: A Documentary History of the black Diaspora in Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean During the Age of slavery (1977) quotes as a conclusion the summation of the black experience in the Greco-Roman world excerpted from the last pages of Blacks In Antiquity. Christian Delacampagne's L'Invention du racisme: Antiquité et Moyen-Age (1983), in a study of the origins of racism, points out that most specialists accept Snowden's view that neither the Greeks nor the Romans attached a special stigma to the color of the skin.

Blacks in Antiquity has not been without its influence on education at the secondary level. Rudolph Masciantonio, the author of Africa in Classical Antiquity: A Curriculum Resource (1974), states in the forward that the interest of the Philadelphia schools in producing a manual designed to assist teachers of classical languages and other disciplines in introducing materials on blacks in classical antiquity was sparked by the appearance of Blacks in Antiquity and by the author's lecture to the teachers of the Philadelphia School District. A textbook in Dutch, Zwarten in de Oudheid (Lier, 1975) designed for students of Latin, was based in large part on materials drawn from Blacks in Antiquity. 

Recent interpretations of the blacks of Greek and Roman artists have given increased attention to what is known of blacks from the copious written sources, and in general have tended to abandon the limited and partial view of earlier studies. Arielle P. Kozloff, "Companion of Dionysus," [1] in a discussion of a fifth- century BC Janiform vase in the shape of Negro and satyr heads, points out that "first it would be helpful to understand what the Greeks knew of black people," observes, inter alia, that Greek mercenaries in Egypt had seen black Africans in great numbers, and comments on the number of references to Ethiopians in Greek literature of the fifth century BC, on the appearance of mulatto children following the presence of blacks in Greece in the army of Xerxes, and on the many artistic representations of the mid- and late-fifth century BC reflecting this anthropological evolution. A similar recognition of the need to abandon the earlier narrow interpretations of blacks in ancient art appears in William R. Biers, "Some thoughts on the Origins of the Attic Head Vase." [2] In accounting for the appearance of blacks in six- and fifth-century BC Greek art, Biers casts doubt on the traditional view that blacks came to Greece only as slaves or servants. He notes the possibility that some statues of blacks of about 560 BC found on the island of Cyprus may represent blacks, perhaps in the service of the Egyptian occupiers of the island, and that juxtaposed black-white heads may have been suggested by an anthropological contrast between northerners and southerners--first seen in Xenophanes.

Negroid Types: Ancient Evidence
and Modern Interpretations

A tendency to overlook the comprehensive image of blacks derivable from ancient sources has often resulted in a distorted picture of even the physical characteristics of blacks described by Greek and Roman authors or portrayed by classical artists. In language remarkably similar to that used by modern anthropologists, classical authors described blacks who closely resemble racial types designated in the modern world as "Negro," "colored," and most recently as "black." On the question of the physical traits of African blacks, ancient writers and artists were most clear--various combinations of dark or black skin, thick lips, broad or flat noses, and wooly or tightly coiled hair. Yet some modern scholars have avoided the use of the terms "Negro" and "black" in describing individuals even when these traits are realistically portrayed by ancient artists or described accurately in classical texts. Although the people of Nubia were by no means homogeneous, the copious iconographic testimony and evidence from Greek and Roman authors point to the presence of blacks and Negroid types in Egypt and Nubia at various times from the middle of the third millennium BC onward. Some observers, then, regard the black man of antiquity, even if his features were clearly delineated, as a kind of early Ellisonian "invisible man": they refuse to see him.

There are also those who have difficulty in believing what they admittedly see. In spite of the widespread repute of blacks as warriors and of the achievement of the Twenty-fifth Ethiopian Dynasty in Egypt, a remarkable incredulity appears in the following observation on Ethiopian rule in Egypt: "In the place of a native Egyptian pharaoh or of the usurping Lybians the throne of Egypt was occupied by a Negro king from Ethiopia! But his dominion was not for long." [3] Several scholars, though obviously impressed by the bulk of the iconographical evidence, in assessments of the black population of the ancient world, have underestimated the significance of the many blacks in ancient art by "explaining them away." Negroes in the Graeco-Roman world, it is argued for example, "were not extremely rare, but were sufficiently uncommon to interest both artists and the public as exotic types." [4] Or the iconographical evidence is quite remarkable although "probably more indicative of an ancient curiosity in foreign types than of any great n]umbers of blacks in the Greco- Roman world." [5] Or Negroes in classical art are the result of a selective process which "abstracts from real life those limited images which once formulated, and launched into the public consciousness, have a disturbing tendency to persist," and which, because of their exoticism, continue to be repeated as decorative motives…[6] Interpretations such as these, however, leave several questions unanswered: Why were blacks depicted so frequently over such a long span of time? At what point would "curiosity" or "exoticism" be expected to cease? And above all, why is the iconographical evidence so often corroborated by written evidence and vice versa? Nor were the blacks of ancient artists largely "stereotypical" or "conventional," as some have argued. All Negroes may look alike to some whites, but Greek and Roman artists did not see them as such. In fact, one of the astonishing facts about classical portrayals of blacks is their freshness and the great variety of physical types. Classical art is an important source for a quite accurate and often realistic picture of varied Negroid types and the role of blacks in the daily life of the ancient world, [7] and suggests strongly that blacks were certainly much more numerous than it has been generally realized.

There are others who ignore the primary sources pertaining to the black population in the ancient world and maintain that almost all inhabitants of Africa were black. Two recent publications, Black Women in Antiquity and African Presence in Early Europe, both edited by Ivan Van Sertima, [8] fall into this category. Although many of the writers in these two volumes at times use the terms "African" and "Africoid" loosely' these words are clearly used regularly as equivalents of Negroid types. Such an equivalency, though contradicted by the ancient evidence, is stated as follows by Chancellor Williams: " In ancient times 'African' and 'Ethiopian' were used interchangeably because both meant the same thing: a black." [9] The word Afer (African), however, was generally employed by the Romans to designate populations of the coastal regions of North Africa west of Egypt (e.g. Numidians, Moors), of the Carthaginians and their allies, and of the inhabitants of the Roman province of Africa. "African," as an adjective, is applied only once to a clearly Negroid type--the detailed description of a black woman in a poem, the Moretum, written in dactylic hexameter. The use of Afer as a cognomen may also in another instance, because of additional evidence, have indicated Negroid extraction--in the name of the well-known Latin poet, Publius Terentius Afer. [10] These usages however, are exceptions, and the only Greek or Latin word that commonly referred to an unquestionably Negroid type, it must be emphasized, was Aithiops (Aethiops), Ethiopian, literally a person with a burnt skin, a colored person--a word that described a variety of black or Negroid types characterized by combinations of dark or black skin, wooly or tightly coiled hair, thick lips, and flat or broad noses.

Another frequent misconception in some discussions of the populations of the ancient world is the assumption that words or expressions describing people as dark--or black--skinned were always in classical usage the equivalents of "Ethiopians" i.e. Negroes, or, in twentieth century usage, blacks. Greeks and Romans, well acquainted with their contemporaries, differentiated between the various gradations of color in Mediterranean populations and made it clear that only some of the black- or dark-skinned peoples, those coming from the south of Egypt and the southern fringes of northwest Africa, were Ethiopians, i.e. Negroes. Ethiopians, known as the blackest peoples on earth, became the yardstick by which classical authors measured the color of others. In first century AD, Manilius described Ethiopians as the blackest; Indians, less sunburnt; Egyptians, mildly dark; with Moors the lightest in this color scheme. In other words, to all these peoples--Ethiopians, Indians, Egyptians, and Moors--who were darker than the Greeks and Romans, classical authors applied color-words but it should be emphasized that in general the ancients described only one of these--Ethiopians--as unmistakably Negroid. To summarize this point, there is no justification to equate Egyptians, Moors or any other north Africans, with Ethiopians, even when a color-word is applied to them, unless details are given as to other physical traits such as color, hair, nose, or lips, or unless there is additional evidence to support an equivalence with Ethiopian.

Cheikh Anta Diop's "Egyptians"

In one of the most recent explications of his theory that Egyptians from earliest times were blacks, i.e. Negroes, Cheikh Anta Diop relies heavily on what he calls the evidence of classical authors. [11] Diop writes that according to Greek and Latin writers contemporary with the ancient Egyptians, " the Egyptians were Negroes, thick-lipped, kinky-haired and thin-legged; the unanimity of the authors' evidence on a physical fact as salient as a people's race will be difficult to minimize or pass over." One of the passages which Diop cited is a much disputed account of the Colchians and Egyptians by the historian Herodotus, the meaning of which is uncertain. Of the other passages quoted, one does not necessarily refer to an Egyptian, and the others do not support Diop's statement about "thick-lipped, kinky-haired Egyptians"; in fact, the authors cited do not even mention hair or lips, but illustrate only a point well known to classical authors: adjectives denoting color were used in Greek and Latin authors to describe a number of peoples darker than Greeks and Romans--a practice which, however, by no means indicated that such individuals were Ethiopians, i.e. Negroes or blacks. Further, Diop overlooks the fact that classical authors regularly differentiated between Egyptians and Ethiopians. The Indians south of the Ganges, though browned by the sun, Arrian observed, were not so dark as Ethiopians, whereas northern Indians resembled Egyptians. Finally, it should be noted that Egyptian artists at various times from the middle of the third millennium BC onward depicted southerners (Kushites, Nubians) with tightly coiled hair and thick lips--characteristics clearly differing from those in their portrayals of Egyptians. Further, Egyptian painters often used a carbon black color in representations of Kushites, a reddish tint for Egyptian men and a paler hue for Egyptian women. This important evidence does not mean that there were not inhabitants of Egypt who were apparently racially mixed. In fact, the earliest recognizable portrait of a black in Egyptian art is preserved in a limestone head (ca. 2600 BC) of the Negroid wife of an Egyptian prince from Giza, near modern Cairo. [12] The Negroid archers and their Egyptian wives depicted on stelae at Gebelein were not the only soldiers in the Egyptian army whose wives were Egyptians. Flavius Philostratus may also have had mixed black-white types in mind when he observed that people in the neighborhood of the Egyptian-Nubian boundary were not completely black, but half-breeds in color, not so black as Ethiopians but darker than Egyptians.

Cleopatra and the Joel A. Rogers "Tradition"

Cleopatra is another example of an "African" who, it has been argued, was a black. In total disregard of the ancient evidence John Henrik Clarke, in a chapter entitled "African Warrior Queens" in Black Women in Antiquity, leaning heavily on the J. A. Rogers'* "tradition," makes this astonishing statement: "More nonsense has been written about Cleopatra than about any other African queen, mainly because it has been the desire of many writers to paint her white. She was not a white woman, she was not a Greek…Until the emergence of the doctrine of white superiority Cleopatra was generally pictured as a distinct African woman, dark in color." [13] In support of this statement Clarke cites a strange medley of unconvincing, if not unscholarly items: Shakespeare's description of the queen in Antony and Cleopatra as "tawny"; Cleopatra's description of herself as "black" in the Book of Acts; a reference to Cleopatra as "fat and black" in Ripley's Believe It or Not; and a modern painting of the queen by Earl Sweeney. Cleopatra, however was not even an Egyptian but, like the other Ptolemies, of Macedonian descent. Coins struck by the Ptolemies, including those with portraits of Cleopatra, leave no doubt about their "Caucasoid" or "non-black" physical traits.[14]

Blacks and Whites in Northwest Africa

The assumption that a majority of the inhabitants of north Africa such as Numidians, Gaetulians, and Moors, were blacks, is also contradicted by the ancient evidence. Classical accounts clearly distinguish between the light-skinned inhabitants of coastal northwest Africa and the darker Ethiopians who lived on the southern fringes of the area. The ancient sources also point to the presence in northwest Africa of mixed black-white types, strongly suggested by names such as Libyoaethiopes (Libyan Ethiopians), Leucoaethiopes (white Ethiopians) and Melanogeatuli (black Gaetulians), a kind of intermediate population, an amalgam of whites and Ethiopians, and by the descriptions of the Garamantes, classified in some classical texts as Ethiopians but distinguished from Ethiopians by others. [15] Classical accounts of the physical features of northwest Africans are amply confirmed by the iconographical evidence. Mosaics, sculpture in the round, and other art objects from northwest Africa depict the inhabitants as predominantly white and portray relatively few blacks, far fewer than in the art of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. [16]

Hannibal is an additional illustration of an "African" who has been erroneously regarded as black. J.A. Rogers states that the Carthaginians were descendants of the Phoenicians, a Negroid people, and that in fact until the rise of the doctrine of  white superiority Hannibal was traditionally known as a black man. [17] In this same tradition, Van Sertima [18] refers to Carthaginians as "a largely Africoid people", and publishes some illustrations of coins depicting Negroes and elephants in a drawing by Sylvia Bakos, which are markedly similar to coins from central Italy appearing in Blacks in Antiquity, where it is argued that the Negroes represented Hannibal's mahouts. [19] Van Sertima's describes the coins were actually Carthaginians. Coins, however, issued in Spain, with portraits of Hannibal's family, the Barcaids, depict these Carthaginians as Caucasoids, not as blacks. [20] Finally, neither Rogers nor Van Sertima cites any ancient source as a basis for the statement that the peoples who came to Carthage from Phoenicia, located in southwestern Asia at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, were Negroid or Africoid, i.e. blacks.

Blacks as Seen by Ancient Artists and Modern Critics

Some scholars seem to have misread the intent of Greek and Roman artists who have portrayed blacks. Orlando Patterson, for example, while admitting the beauty of a few Graeco-Roman representations of Negroes, finds that "most of them are hideous and implicitly racist in perspective…" [21] A terracotta of a Negro boy pulling a thorn from his foot (Spinario) has been interpreted as a parody of a white prototype, with the head of an imbecile substituted for the original. [22] The same piece, however, has also been described as a "creation of unusual charm" and "transformed by the coroplast into a human document, a sympathetic study of a racial type." [23] Even if one makes an allowance for an element of subjectivity in the interpretation of art, one must grant that the first interpretation of the black Spinario suggests a view of the Negro's physical appearance not supported by the ancient evidence, while the second accords with the sympathetic treatment of blacks in Hellenistic art.

By far a majority of scholars see in the blacks of ancient art an astonishing variety and vitality, and penetrating depictions of types which appealed to the craftsmen. Negro models presented the artists with a challenge to represent the distinctive features of blacks in a variety of media and with an opportunity, by contrasting blacks with white Mediterranean types, to express the infinite variety of a common human nature. The obvious aesthetic attractiveness of Negro models to many artists, the long popularity of blacks as subjects, the high quality of many pieces, some of the finest examples from ancient workshops, and numerous sympathetic portrayals have given rise to a common view that ancient artists were free from prejudice in their depiction of blacks and that their individualized representations of Negroes "would have been inconceivable in later slave societies founded on the premise or racial inferiority." [24]

Misreadings of Classical Texts

Finally, there are those who in various ways still misinterpret specific textual references to Ethiopians. "Juvenal and the Blacks" by David S. Wiesen [25] is an example of modern misreadings of the ancient evidence which have failed to take into consideration relevant research in the social sciences. Wiesen concludes that the Roman satirist Juvenal despised the physical being of Negroes and attaches "a special stigma to the physical attributes of blacks." What Wiesen and some others have overlooked in such interpretations is that the passages they cite as evidence of anti-black sentiment merely reflect what H. Hoetink has referred to as a somatic norm image, something found in all societies, black included. [26] There is nothing strange about a preference for a "white" type of beauty in a predominantly white society or a preference for a "black" type among blacks. It is questionable whether individuals should be called "racists" because they accept the aesthetic canons prevailing in their country. Juvenal himself recognizes a somatic norm image when he writes that Germans with blue eyes and yellow hair evoke no astonishment in their own country because their physical traits are common, and that no one would laugh at pygmies in their native land because the whole population is no taller than one foot. The number of implied or expressed preferences in classical literature for "white" beauty exceeds slightly those for "black" or "dark" beauty. About this there is nothing strange. But what is unusual was the fact that in predominantly white ancient societies there were those who rejected a somatic norm image of whiteness, others who extolled the beauty of blackness, and still others with preferences for blacks who had no hesitancy in saying so.

The above-cited interpretation of Juvenal and his so-called contempt for the physical being of Negroes is contradicted both by the satirist's own recognition of the somatic norm image and by the overall Graeo-Roman attitude toward the physical appearance of blacks and frequent praise of blackness. Similarly, a failure to look at the total image of blacks among the ancients has at times resulted in a distorted view of blacks. "Denigratory" racial attitudes have been seen, for example, in Herodotus' description of the language of some Ethiopians as similar to the screeching of bats and unlike that of any other people, and in Pliny's picture of Blemmyae with no heads, and with mouths and eyes attached to their chests. [27] But classical accounts of bizarre customs and strange peoples had nothing to do with the color of the skin and were not evidence of anti-black sentiment: imaginary creatures were reported not only among black Ethiopians in the deep south but among white peoples, frequently Scythians, in the far south. Pliny's northerners, for example, included people with one eye in the center of their heads and others who ran, with one foot turned backward, through the forests like wild beasts; and the inhabitants of Ierene (Ireland), according to Strabo, were among the most savage peoples in the ancient world, more savage than Britons. [28]  It was not the color that was the determining factor in such descriptions of peoples inhabiting the fringes of the known world, but the distance of peripheral peoples from central societies. In spite of accounts of a few strange Ethiopians on the southern edges of the earth, the overall Graeco-Roman view of blacks was positive. Ancient Nubia was in general perceived by contemporaries, both inside and outside Africa, as an independent country, rich in coveted resources, and a region respected for its military power which at times played a significant role in the international politics of the day. And the profile of Ethiopians in classical literature remained unchanged from Homer onward--and the image was highly favorable. There was clear-cut respect among Mediterranean peoples for Ethiopians and their way of life.

In spite of a few recent interpretations that read into the ancient evidence color prejudice where none existed, most of the scholars who have considered the total written and iconographic records see in classical texts or the works of ancient artists nothing comparable to the virulent color prejudice of the modern world. Greek and Roman authors were neither color-blind nor color-prejudiced. They had the ability to see and to comment on obvious physical differences without seeing in the color of the skin a basis for prejudice. Classical anthropology attributed physical differences to the effects of diverse environments upon a uniform human nature and evolved from these differences no theory as to the inferiority of blacks or the superiority of whites, and no hierarchical notion of human races, with Europeans occupying the highest and blacks the lowest position. Blacks and slaves were never synonymous: in fact, the vast majority of the thousands of slaves were white, not black. Blacks experienced no handicaps in fundamental social relations, nor did they suffer detrimental distinctions that excluded them from opportunities--occupational, economic, or cultural--available to other newcomers in alien lands. Black-white sexual relations were never the cause of great emotional crises and many blacks were physically assimilated into the predominantly white populations of the Mediterranean world. The strong bond that united blacks and whites in the common worship of the goddess Isis was reinforced by Christianity. Early Christian writers used the blackness of Ethiopians as a dramatic symbol of Christianity's ecumenical mission and as an illustration of the meaning of the Scriptures for all peoples. In the early church, blacks found equality in both theory and practice. In short, the onus of intense color prejudice cannot be placed upon the shoulders of the ancients. The proverb, "Africa is always producing something new," preserved by Aristotle and Pliny, is in a sense applicable to the study of blacks in antiquity: the experience of African blacks in the predominantly white ancient world sheds new light on the reasons for the absence of color prejudice in antiquity and for the development of anti-black sentiment in the modern world.

---

NOTES

1. Appendix E: 206-207.
2. Appendix E: 120-121.
3. G. Steindorf and K. C. Seele, When Egypt Ruled the East, rev. by K. C. Seele (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1957) 271.
4. Morton Smith, review of Blacks in Antiquity, American Historical Review 76 (1971): 140.
5. M. Joseph Costelloe, review of Blacks in Antiquity, Review for Religious 19 (1970): 588.
6. Dawson Kiang, "The Brooklyn Museum's New Head of a Black," Archaeology 25.1 (1972): 6.
7. Cf. L. Castiglione, review of Blacks in Antiquity, Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 24 (1972); 440, and Engelbert Mveng, Les Sources grecques de l'histoire négro-africaines (Paris: Présence africaine, 1972) 70.
8. Appendix E.
9. The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 BC to 2000 AD (Chicago: Third World Press, 1974) 32.
10. Snowden, Blacks in Antiquity 170.
11. "Origins of Ancient Egyptians," General History of Africa, 2: Ancient Civilizations of Africa, ed. G. Mokhtar. 8 vols. (Paris; UNESCO, 1981) vol. 2: 36-39.
12. Snowden, Before Color Prejudice figs 1-2.
13. Appendix E: Van Sertima (1984) 126-127.
14. Cf. J. M. C. Toynbee, Roman Historical Portraits (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978) 79-88.
15. Snowden, Before Color Prejudice 8-9.
16. See, for example, J.M.C. Toynbee, Roman Historical Portraits 89-91, for rulers of Numidia; 92-99, for rulers of Mauretania.
17. World's Great Men of Color, 2 vols. (New York: J.A. Rogers, 1947) vol. 1: 50, 142.
18. Appendix E: from Van Sertima (1985) 138-140.
19. Cf. Snowden, Blacks in Antiquity fig. 41 and pp. 130-131.
20. Cf. J. M. C. Toynbee, Roman Historical Portraits 97-99
21. Slavery and Social Death; A Comparative Study (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982 ) 421, note 16.
22. A. W. Lawrence, Greek and Roman Sculpture (New York; Harper & Row, 1972) 42.
23. R. A. Higgins, Greek Terracottas (London: Methuen, 1967) 120.
24. Appendix E.
25. Classica et Mediaevalia 31 (1970): 132-150.
26. See Snowden, Before Color Prejudice 75-82.
27. J. E. Harris, Appendix E: xx.
28. See Snowden, Before Color Prejudice  51-52 and note 57 pp.127-128.

Appendix A:
Blacks in the Greek and Roman World: Publications by Frank M. Snowden, Jr.

1. "The Negro in Ancient Greece." Proceedings of the American Philological Association 77 (1946): 322-323.
2. "The Negro in Classical Italy." American Journal of Philology 68 (1947): 266-292.
3. "The Negro in Ancient Greece." American Anthropologist 50 (1948): 31-44.
4. "A Classical Addendum to Tannenbaum's Slave and Citizen; The Negro in the Americas." Classical Outlook 25 (1948): 71-72.
5. "Rome and the Ethiopian Warrior." Studies Presented to David Moore Robinson. Eds. G.E. Mylonas and D. Raymond. 2 vols. St. Louis, MO (1953) 2: 906-917.
6. "A Note on Hannibal's Mahouts." The Numismatic chronicle of the Royal Numismatic Society 14 (1954): 197-198.
7. "Ethiopians and the Isiac Worship." L' Antiquité classique 25 (1956): 112-116.
8. "Some Greek and Roman Observations on the Ethiopian." Traditio 16 (1960): 19-38.
9. Blacks in Antiquituy: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970.
10. 'Ethiopians and the Graeco-Roman World." The African Diaspora; Interpretative Essays. Eds. M.L. Kilson and R.I. Rotberg. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976. 11-36.
11. Blacks, Early Christianity, And." The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible; Supplementary Volume. Nashville, TN: 1976. 111-114.
12. Co-author with J. Vercoutter, J. Leclant, and J. Desanges. The Image of the Black in Western Art, 1: From the Pharaohs to the Fall of the Roman Empire. New York: Morrow, 1976. Also published in French.
13. 'Aithiopes." Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, 1.1; AARA-APHLAD Zurich 1981. 413-419; 1.2: Plates 321-326.
14. Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983.
15. "Iconography; An Aid to the Interpretation of Ethiopian Warriors in Greek and Roman Literature." American Journal of Archaeology 90 (1986): 219.

Appendix B:
Excerpts from Reviews of Blacks in Antiquity

1. W.R. CONNOR. Good Reading: Review of Books Recommended by the Princeton Faculty 21 (19700: 3-4. --"… the caution, patience, and good sense of Blacks in Antiquity make it possible to correct errors and omissions that have passed for the truth and let us glimpse a society which for all its faults and failures never made color the basis in judging a man."
2. B.H. WARMINGTON. African Historical Studies 4 (1971): 383-386. -- "Frank Snowden's work is one of the fullest studies of the attitudes adopted by ancient Greece and Rome to any of the peoples they included under the description 'barbarians.'… Snowden is to be congratulated on an excellent work of scholarship…"
3. H. METZGER. Revue des études anciennes 73 (1971): 496-498. --- "this is the work of a gifted connoisseur of Greco-Roman antiquity who moves with ease among texts and representational monuments… the richness of information, abundance and variety of illustrations make this work a well organized document, easy to consult, which will find its place in all libraries and which will be cited again and again."
4. L. CASTIGLIONE. Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 24 (1972): 440-443. --- "This is the first monograph which examines the meeting of the Graeco-roman world and the black peoples of Africa exhaustively… It uses the literary sources from Homer to the Fathers of the Church, the utilizable inscriptions… as well as the representations from all branches of the art of antiquity. It is characterized by an admirable fullness in the survey of modern literature… The archaeologist can be especially grateful to Snowden for giving a considerably richer and broaded illustrated survey of the representations of Negro and Negroid figures in ancient art than any work dealing with the subject hitherto… It must be read by every student of Antiquity."
5. P. MACKENDRICK. American Journal of Philology 94 (1973): 212-214. --- "The novelty of this book, the fruit of a lifetime's labor of love… lies in the exhaustive, impeccable scholarship with which it documents and illustrates its conclusion, that there is no evidence for racism or color prejudice in Greco-Roman antiquity… In short, in the first major encounter in European records of blacks in a predominantly white society, the Greeks and Romans counted blacks peoples in. Of this fact, and of its definitive exposition by a gifted colleague, classical scholars may well be proud."
6. M. CEBEILLAC-GERVASONI. L'Antiquité classique 44 91975): 781-782. -- "This book… represents the only exhaustive and impartial study on the attitude of the Greeks and Romans toward colored people: The Ethiopians… A remarkable photographic documentation, collected from the museums of the entire world illustrates his subject… An imposing number of notes, rich in bibliographical, literary, or epigraphical information and an index of names and subjects complete this remarkable work work at every level."

Appendix C:
Excerpts from reviews of The Image of the Black in Western Art

1. J. RUSSELL. The New York Times Book Review 5 December 1976. --- "I don't remember that a serious approach has ever before been made to the problem posed in The Image of the Black in Western Art by Jean Vercoutter, Jean Leclant, Frank M. Snowden, Jr. and Jehan Desanges… It deals with Western art from the Pharaohs to the fall of the Roman Empire, and it has the kind of stately and illimitably generous presentation that is usually reserved for the white man's glorification of himself. Of course the subject deserves it. There is everything to be said for a book that ransacks the world for superlative works of art from ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient Rome and ancient Northern Africa. 'Obviously,' we may say; but who else but the Menil Foundation has done it on such an Olympian scale and with such scrupulous scholarship? This book - and foreseeably, this whole series - is a gift to humanity."
2. J. FRANK. La Libre Belgique 24 November 1976. --- "Art and history are combined in this superb album to inform and surprise the reader who is offered the result of a detailed historical survey conducted for fifteen years on the iconography of blacks in the Mediterranean and western world from its beginning to the nineteenth century. At the initiation of the Menil Foundation and under the coordination of the young art historian Ladislas Bugner, six and one half million photographs have been looked at in about forty institutions and ten countries. As a result there exists a photographic archive of some ten thousand works of art of every kind."
3. J. D. COONEY. Saturday Review  30 April 1977. --- "The handsomely illustrated book reviewed here is the first of a series of three volumes investigating the iconography of blacks in occidental art. It virtually exhausts all possible resources, both representational and historical, on the Negro in antiquity, a subject only partially investigated until now… for the art specialist this handsomely printed book will immediately become the basic reference for any study of the African peoples."
4. P. DUCREY. Journal de Genève  12 December 1976. --- "The author of the chapter devoted to the Greco-Roman period Frank Snowden… is the best contemporary specialist on the depictions of blacks in classical art. He represents well the evidence for the attraction which blacks had for the artists of the period under consideration, and he rejects as untenable the racist image which moderns sometimes project in Greco-Roman art. The ancients did not attach to the color of the skin the importance which is given to it today."
5. D. B. DAVIS. New York Review of Books 5 November 1981. --- "Although historians of the past two decades have greatly enriched our understanding of New World Slavery and of whites' prejudice toward blacks, they have generally ignored iconographic evidence. (A notable exception is Frank M. Snowden, Jr., Blacks in Antiquity…) During the earlier Hellenistic and Roman periods skilled craftsmen clearly took delight in presenting Negroes in a variety of roles, moods, and postures… The popularity of such motifs, which spread far beyond the probable physical presence of any blacks, may have derived from the fashionableness of Alexandrian styles and ornamentation… such individualized and humanistic representations would have been inconceivable in later slave societies founded on the premise of racial inferiority. In late antiquity the image of black was one expression of the infinite diversity of a common human nature… regardless of the complexities and ambiguities of the black image, the artistic heritage from Egyptian and Hellenistic times to the great portraits by Memling, Bosch, and Rembrandt presents an unanswerable challenge to the later racist societies that have relied on dehumanizing caricature as an instrument of social and economic oppression."

Appendix D:
Excerpts from reviews Illustrating The Interdisciplinary Appeal of Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks.

A.  GENERAL READERS

1. Choice July/Aug. 1983: 528. -- "Always welcome is a scholarly book that presents important ideas in a fresh way that general readers will probably enjoy. When those ideas have important social implications, every one benefits, as in this clear and lucid account of race relations from the middle of third millennium BC until the sixth century AD…. As an introduction to the absence of color prejudice in antiquity, this is a convenient and well-written scholarly account.'

B.  HISTORIANS, STUDENTS OF RACIAL QUESTIONS, AND SPECIALISTS IN AFRICAN STUDIES

1. B. H. WARMINGTON. International Journal of African Studies 17 (1984): 520-522. --- "Frank Snowden is the author of a standard work in a field of ancient history he has made his own--Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience (Cambridge, MA, 1970). To some extent the present work covers the same ground, but it is more analytical and interpretive of ancient attitudes and reasons for the lack of color prejudice in antiquity, with some references to recent sociological work on the phenomenon in general. He also discusses the relations between earlier Mediterranean cultures (Egyptian and Assyrian) and with the blacks with whom they came in contact, and makes the most of the considerable amount of evidence… Snowden's demonstration of its (color prejudice) absence in both books is certainly correct (though a few scholars have doubted it)… Snowden's book is illustrated with a number of well-chosen illustrations, is excellently referenced and forms a welcome complement to his earlier study."
2. E. PARATORE. La Parole del Passato; Rivista di Studi Antichi 217 (1984): 310-320. --- "Like Blacks in Antiquity, which made use of iconographical material found in European, African, and American museums, in addition to literary, epigraphical, papyrological and numistamatic evidence, this more recent work, in its clarity, precision, and readability will become a work of lasting value… The up-to-date sensitivity of the author to pertinent interdisciplinary concepts and tools and to historical comparisons with the attitudes of others and later societies… makes the work important reading for new perspectives not only for the student of the ancient world (and of the African in particular) but also for any one interested in racial questions…"
3. H. J. DIESNER. Gnomon 56 (1984): 373-374. --- "Snowden's broad-gauged work is destined to inspire broader research… especially that which will fix more precisely the role of Negroids and other dark-skinned people in the intellectual cultural development of antiquity. Perhaps in this way existing prejudices as well as distorted observations will be even more effectively eradicated."

ARCHAEOLOGISTS

L. CASSON. Archaeology 36 (1983): 72. --- In Blacks in Antiquity Frank Snowden "presented and analyzed whatever was known about blacks in the Graeco-Roman world. In this study he enlarges his field to include all antiquity, but narrows his inquiry: did there exist at any time or place the view of blacks as inferiors that has so blighted their lives in recent centuries?… the whites of antiquity, although they identified blacks as a race apart marked by their color, in no way considered them inferiors… In short, the prejudice of the modern world was absent from the ancient… This cogent, well-written study is richly illustrated with 47 pages of plates of uniformly high quality."

HISTORIANS OF RELIGION

P. W. HOLLENBACH. Religious Studies Review 9 (1983): 374. -- " The first half of this substantial book describes the 3,000 year history of northeastern and northwestern African blacks in the ancient 'white' cultures of Egypt, Assyria, classical Greece and Rome, and early Christianity… The second half… seeks to explain the reasons for the positive image of blacks. Various factors are proposed: favorable first impressions… a high regard for Nubian material and cultural resources, the rejection by many ancients of a white 'somatic norm' of excellence… and two influential religions (Isis and Christianity) which sponsored unequivocal acceptance of blacks… This book… should be of great interest to historians of religion and of race relations."

CLASSICISTS

J. E. REXINE. Platon 36 (1984); 142-143. --- "'In Before Color Prejudice, Frank Snowden has two aims, which this book more than amply fulfills: through a study of the iconographical and written sources, to trace the image of blacks as seen by whites from Egyptian to Roman times and to explore the rationale for the attitude toward blacks during this period (p. viii). As a conscientious classical scholar, it was constantly a concern of Snowden's to avoid misreading the evidence in terms of modern sociological or political ideological positions at the same time to use relevant contemporary research in the social sciences to deepen his and our understanding of color and race in antiquity… a book that should be required reading in all university courses in classics and ancient history… and deserves to be in every classicist's library and his findings included in the teaching of every survey of the history of the ancient Mediterranean world."

SOCIOLOGISTS

D. L. NOEL. American Journal of Sociology 90 (1984): 226-227. --- "In the final chapter, 'Toward an Understanding of the Ancient view,' Snowden draws on contemporary social science and provides a sophisticated assessment of the ancients' lack of racism… Snowden's reasoning is sound and complements Stephen J. Gould's assessment in his The Mismeasure of Man… of latter day scientists who perceive and interpret racial differences through lenses severely distorted by prevailing racism… the author has given us the clearest and most thorough assessment of the ancient views of blacks that we are likely to have unless and until new evidence is uncovered."

Appendix E:
Studies Pertinent to Aspects of Blacks in the Ancient Greek and Roman World Published Since 1970

1. BIERS, W.R. "some Thoughts on the Origin of the Attic Head Vase." Ancient Greek Art and Iconography. Ed. Warren G. Moon. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983. 119-126.
2. BOURGEOIS A. La Grèce antique devant la négritude. Paris: Présence africaine, 1971.
3. BUITRON, D.M. "Greek Encounters with Africans." The Walters Art Gallery Bulletin 32.5 (1980): 1-2.
4. COURTES, J.M. "The Theme of 'Ethiopia' and 'Ethiopians' in Patristic Literature." Preliminary essay. The Image of Black in Western Art, 2.1. 9-32.
5. CRACCO RUGGINI, L. "Legenda e realtà degli Ethiopi nella cultura tardo-imperiale." Atti del VI congresso internazionale di studi ethiopici, "Problemi attuali di scienza e cultura." Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1974. 141-193.
6. -----------------. "II negro buono e il negro malvagio nel mondo classico." Pubblicazioni dell' Università cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milano) 6 (1979): 108-135.
7. DAVIS, D.B. Review of The Image of the Black in Western Art, 2. The New York Review of Books 5 Nov. 1981.
8. DELACAPAGNE, C. L'Invention du racisme: Antiquité et Moyen-Age. Paris: Fayard, 1983.
9. DESANGES, J. "L'Afrique noire et le monde mediterranéen dans l'Antiquité (Ethiopiens et Gréco-romains). Revue française d'outre-mer. 62.228 (1975):391-414.
10. -----------------. "The Iconography of the black in Ancient North Africa." The Image of The Black in Western Art, 1.246-268.
11. DEVISSE, J. The Image of the Black in Western Art, 2.1.
12. HALL, J. " A Black Note in Juvenal, Satire V 52-55." Proceedings of the African Classical Association 17 (1983). 108-113.
13. HARRIS, J.E., ed. Africa and Africans as Seen by Classical Writers: The William Leo Hansberry African History Notebook, 2. Washington: Howard University Press, 1977.
14. HOCHFIELD, S. and E. RIEFSTAHL, eds. Africa in Antiquity: The Arts of Ancient Nubia and Sudan. 2 vols. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum, 1978. Vol. 1, The Essays.
15. The Image of the Black in Western Art, I: From the Pharaohs to the Fall of the Roman Empire. J. Vercoutter, J. Leclant, F. M. Snowden, Jr., J. Desanges. New York: Morrow, 1976. Published also in French.
16. The Image of the Black in Western Art, 2: From the Early Christian Era to the "Age of Discovery." J. Devisse. 2 pts. New York: Morrrow, 1979. Pt. 1, From the Demonic Threat to the Incarnation of Sainthood. Published also in French.
17. IRWIN, G.W. Africans Abroad: A Documentary History of the Black Diaspora in Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean during the Age of Slavery. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.
18. KOZLOFF, A.P. "Companions of Dionysus." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art (Sept. 1980): 206-219.
19. LECLANT, J. "Kushites and Meroites: Iconography of the African Rulers in the ancient Upper Nile." The Image of the Black in Western Art, 1. 89-132.
20. LECLANT, J. "Egypt, Land of Africa, in the Greco-Roman World." The Image of the Black in Western Art, 1. 269-285
    LONIS, R. "Les Trois Approches de l'Éthiopien par l'opinion gréco-romaine." Ktema 6 (1981): 69-7.
21. -----------------, ed. Afrique noire et monde méditerranéen dans l'antiquité. Colloque de Dakar. 19-24 Jan. 1976. Dakar, Sénégal: Nouvelles Editions africaines, 1978.
22. MASCIANTONIO, R. Africa in Antiquity: A Curriculum Resource. Philadelphia: 1974.
23. MAYERSON, P. "Anti-Black Sentiment in the 'Vitae Patrum'." Harvard Theological Review 71 (1978): 304-311.
24. MVENG, E. Les Sources grecques de l'histoire négro-africaine depuis Homère jusqu'à Strabon. Paris: Présence africaine, 1972.
25. NEILS, J. "The Group of the Negro Albastra: A Study in Motif Transferal." Antike Kunst 23 (1980): 13-23.
26. RUSSELL, J. Review of The Image of the Black in Western Art, 1. The New York Times Book Review   5 Dec. 1976.
27. SADDINGTON, D. B. "Race Relations in the Early Roman Empire." Aufstieg and Niedergang der romischen Welt  2.3 (1975): 112-137.
28. SANDERS, R. Lost Tribes and Promised Lands: The Origins of American Racism. Boston: Little, Brown, 1978.
29. SNOWDEN, F. M., Jr. See Appendix A.
30. THOMPSON, L. A. "Observations on the Perception of 'Race' in Imperial Rome." Proceedings of the African Classical Association. 17(1983): 1-19.
31. VAN SERTIMA, I. African Presence in Early Europe. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1985.

32. posted Tuesday, 4 May 2004comments