"Were some ancient Greeks black?" Topic

"…."Our best estimate is that the Greeks would be a spectrum of hair colours and skin types in antiquity. I don't think there's any reason to doubt they were Mediterranean in skin type (lighter than some and darker than other Europeans), with a fair amount of inter-mixing," says Whitmarsh.

Not only were the historical Greeks unlikely to be uniformly pale-skinned, but their world was also home to ‘Ethiopians', a vague term for dark-skinned North Africans. They are mentioned in Aethiopis, the story after Homer's Iliad (the epic poems retelling the battle of Troy), where Memnon of Ethiopia joins the fighting….."
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Amicalement
Armand

In short, no. Greeks were not black. The reason so many Ethiopians show up on vase paintings is because the Greeks were fascinated by the 'otherness' of them. The article is a weak attempt by the BBC to defend casting black actors as Achilles and Zeus.

This is typical of the BBC, which is trying to force alternative multi-cultural history down our throats.

I must admit that I only saw 3-4 minutes of the show, as soon as I saw that Achilles and his 'friend' were black i switched off. This is not a racist comment, its just that I dont like it when history is changed for PC purposes.

As the article says its like having a bio-pic of Nelson Mandela and casting Colin Firth as the lead. It is just culturally wrong.

Greeks went everywhere to trade and encountered a lot of different people. No doubt a handful of Ethiopians and Nubians would have found their way to the Greek world. But I'd think this would be a very small fraction of even a cosmopolitan city.

Don't get too worked up over the Netflix show. Nobody is claiming it's a historical document. It's a fantasy program, in the same genre as 300.

If you can tolerate eight foot tall Achaemenid Persians with an S&M aesthetic who throw gunpowder bombs and unleash war rhinos on their enemies, you can probably handle a treatment of the Iliad (sorta) that's more racially diverse than the history it's loosely based on.

TV reflects its intended viewership.

Although I did find myself watching that show and asking myself "Why no East Asians?"

Of course some were. Didn't you ever see a Shakespeare in the Park production of Troilus and Cressida? Julius Caesar? Oedipus Rex? (That would be Sophocles in the Park….)

I enjoyed the BBC Troy series, having a black Achilles was neither here nor there and it was great to see his relationship played out with Patroclus. I found the way they told the Greek side of the conflict really engaging, e.g. Agamemnon's dilemma with respect to sacrificing his daughter. How it's played matters far more than what they look like, although the appearance of the Amazons was just too 'trendy' my taste. Where it fell short was in the rather tedious (and PC) relationships inside Troy. I think the intent was for viewers to empathise with the Trojans but they left me disinterested and siding with the Greeks.

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Whenever I hear the term "an olive complexion" the color green comes to mind. Does that mean they were Orcs…? ;-)

Utter, utter drivel,

like a old man with a poor prostrate problem who just ate some hot curry. Full of piiss and wind…..

Mine are black after I spray paint them in undercoat

Yeah, no.
Greeks were certainly not fans of fair skin either other than in women and maybe the gods. There is at least one writing where they mock the Persians for their fair skin as in untanned. There is also a reference to blue eyed barbarians as having eyes the colour of blind people.
The fair skinned Scythians were used as militia in Athens, but this seems to have had the same kind of respect attached to it as tax collectors. Their job was mostly preventing riots.

Foreigners were just that, foreigners. They might be tolerated within society but they were not considered part of it. There could have been black people in Greece as slaves, merchants or ambassadors but not as part of the general population.

Black people were foreign enough to Greeks and Roman writers that we get reports of people with no noses from early travelers.

evilgong…. you made me laught!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand