Black Identity & Greco-Roman

Slavery A New Interpretation

Common positions

• More White slaves than Black slaves = no racial prejudice (Frank Snowden, Blacks in Antiquity)

• Greeks and Romans, particularly the latter, were ethnocentric (Lloyd Thompson, Romans and Blacks)

• Consensus: Skin color was irrelevant = race did not matter in the Greco-Roman world

Critical Questions

• Is ‘race’ a useful analytical tool?

• Is ‘Black’ meaningful racially or ethnically in this context?

• Slavery was not defined by Blackness in Greco-Roman antiquity, but was Black racial identity defined exclusively by slavery ideologically?

• Can we see, to any extent, ‘Black’ social mobility in Classical Greece or Rome?

Ethnicity/Race problem

• Race is dismissed as irrelevant biological marker – rather than a social construct

• Ethnicity is used as an attempt to sanitize examples of prejudice in antiquity

• Ethnicity is not adequately distinguished from Race

• As a result, Ethnicity is used in contexts that are normally equated with race

• loses analytical value

Ethnicity

• Loosely applied as “culture” – but culture is not exclusive to neither race nor ethnicity

• Richard Wenghofer (2008) sees ethnicity as using the same markers of race – but without the essentialism

• D.E. McCoskey (2012) sees as ethnicity as beneficial for denoting Greek sub-groups (i.e. Athenian/Spartan) and feelings of ‘communal solidarity’

Race

• Race: Unequal relationship between social groups characterized by hegemonic forms of social interaction reinforced by power and privilege within social, political and economic institutions (Marable 1995: 186)

• Racism: perpetuation of this hegemony on the basis of presumed differences in physical and biological characteristics OR theories of cultural deprivation OR intellectual inferiority (ibid)

Black identity definition problem

• Blackness is often ASSUMED to be exclusive to Ethiopians

• Black identity is equated with the outdated & anachronistic ‘Negroid’ concept

• Some argue that skin color had no racial connotations = black was simply a description

• Blackness is assumed to be biological and/or monolithic

Black in Greco-Roman context

• White-medium-Black tripartite scheme of skin color. Greek and Roman males in the middle

• Classical Greece: there were independent Black racial groups

• Territories in the continent we know today as Africa were seen as Black nationalities – no ‘Black Africa’ concept.

• Black racial groups were not exclusive to Africa (i.e. Colchians and Indians)

Identification problem: Slave or Free

Woman?

Attic white-ground Lekythos

Interpretations

• Benjamin Isaac (2004): “undoubtedly a Black slave”

• Haley (2005): could have been a freeborn servant or attendant

• Context is inconclusive

• Should be open to various possibilities

Identifying Black Slaves

• Variety of circumstances where Greeks and Romans encountered people whom they described as ‘Black’ racial group

• Blackness was not exclusive to Ethiopians – multiple Black racial groups

• NEED CONTEXT

Intersectionality

• Juvenal degrades a Black Gaetulian slave race/class intersect (5.64-65)

• The Gaetulian slave is black/ugly while the Asian slave is beautiful -- race

• Gaetulian slaves refusal to assist his elderly cliens disrupts social order – class

• layers of difference can intersect simultaneously, doesn’t necessarily imply Black identity was synonymised with slavery

Social Mobility – Classical Greek

(Athenian) examples • “Melas the Egyptian” is a Metic (Isaeus 5.7)

▫ His racial otherness is constantly emphasized by name and presentation within the text

• Melainis: freed Black slave (IG II² 1568, 24)

▫ His nationality is uncertain

• Black people were not exclusively slaves in Classical Athens, but were clearly subject to racial barriers

Social mobility Roman example

• Terence (185-159 BC) rose from slave to playwright

• North African (Afer genus)

• Described as fusco colore (Seutonius, Life of Terence 5)

• Black identity dismissed/suggested based on the assumption that Afer did (or did not) indicate Ethiopian identity

‘Black’ Perspective

• There are no accounts of individuals, who give attention to their blackness.

• No black men nor black women have been identified in sources

• Greek male elite and Roman male elite perspectives = Eurocentric

• Cannot truly know the Black slave experience

Conclusion

• Race had a complex relationship with other layers of difference

• Racial barriers existed for non-Greeks and non-Romans

• Slavery was not a defining factor of Black identity, but significant in intersections of race/class/gender