Black legionnaries in Roman Army?

[cram]

After watching the recent 'Meet the Romans' with Mary Beard, it brought home to me how cosmopolitan Rome became.

It then got me wondering that if it would have been fairly common to see a blackman walking down the streets of Rome, would it have become quite common to see a smattering of black soldiers and other ethnic groups amoungst the ranks of a Roman legion? As long as they were Roman citizens I imagine men of any ethnic background would have been entitled to join the Roman army, and I'm sure some would have chosen to do so.

Are there any ancient sources that make mention of black soldiers in the Roman army? Of course skin colour does'nt seem to have mattered much if at all to the Romans, so it maybe something they would'nt have thought to mention anyway.

[Red Orc]

There certainly were black soldiers (and soldiers from all over the Empire, and outside) in the Roman armies, both in lthe legions and auxilliary troops. As well as for instance the Mesoptamian boatmen recruited to work the boats on the River Tyne, and such like.

However my understanding is that after the first generation or so, units generally recruited from where they were stationed - so after the transfer of 'Sarmatian' cavalry (from Dacia and before that southern Russia, and before that Iran) to Lancashire in AD175 or thereabouts, by around AD200 most of those 'Sarmatians' would probably be locals.

So one generation of black soldiers from any given unit in northern Europe seems reasonable, who would often settle down and have families in the region where they were demobbed (and of course the same in the opposite direction - the IX 'Hispana' - originally recruited in Spain - was stationed in Britain long enough for its recruitment to be British before probably being transferred to Syria, so there were probably a lot of red-haired pale-blue people knocking aroud in the Syrian desert in AD120 or thereabouts).

What's fairly unlikely I think is 'ethnically mixed' units, unless you're seeing a unit in the process of moving to local recruitment - in which case the veterans might be from Libya and the new recruits from Holland, for instance.

Senior officers... a different matter, they might be posted to different commands across the empire, I believe.

So seeing a black officer in command of white troops, or vice versa, would I think be more common than seeing different ethnicities in a unit.

[Steve F]

Depends what you mean by "black" of course.  North Africa became a fully integrated part of the Roman Empire, but there would have been much less contact with sub-Saharan Africa.

[Red Orc]

Sure, 'black' and 'white' are somewhat comparative terms. And modern ones. Contemporary descriptions of 'black' Romans usually mean they had black hair. Numerous people were nicknamed 'Afer' (African) though this probably means more like Tunisian than, say, Nigerian.

However...

There had been thousands of years of contact between Egypt and Nubia before the Romans even got there, and a substantial Nubian element in the Egyptian population; the Egyptians regarded the Nubians as being black. So even if Egypt was theonly source of 'black' people in the Roman empire, there would still have been quite a lot of them, as Egypt was one of the Empire's most populous provinces.

There were several legions and other auxiliary units based in and raised around Egypt, which almost certainly included soldiers of Nubian heritage. The Theban Legion, for instance, from Upper Egypt, must have included a great many soldiers that would to us resemble people from Ethiopia - if it was real of course. Later legends have them being transfered to Gaul in the 3rd century.

There were several units called 'Afrorum' (probably what we'd think of as Tunisia) serving around the Empire, for instance in Germany; and also a unit thought to be called 'Maurorum & Afrorum' ('Moors and Africans'?) but I don't know where they served.

People like the Garamantes were developed civilisations existing in north-west Africa, who presumably were facilitating trade (almost certainly involving population movements) between the Mediterranean and the polities that preceeded the Empire of Ghana, in the Mali area.

The Greek geographer Ptolemey wrote about the east African coast as far south as Sofala in Mozambique (well down into sub-Saharan Africa) in the 2nd century AD; while it's possible that there was little trade (and therefore very little movement of populations) the converse I'd think is more likely to be true.

Anyway; I think there's a very strong case to be made that it would not be at unusual to see African soldiers or other people of black African ancestry in the Empire, even in the north. Though the case for Septimius Severus as the earliest 'black man in England' (as i saw reported some years ago in a history journal) is perhaps a little far fetched.

[cataphractarius]

There certainly were black soldiers (and soldiers from all over the Empire, and outside) in the Roman armies, both in lthe legions and auxilliary troops. As well as for instance the Mesoptamian boatmen recruited to work the boats on the River Tyne, and such like.

However my understanding is that after the first generation or so, units generally recruited from where they were stationed - so after the transfer of 'Sarmatian' cavalry (from Dacia and before that southern Russia, and before that Iran) to Lancashire in AD175 or thereabouts, by around AD200 most of those 'Sarmatians' would probably be locals.

While I have some reservations about "black" soldiers serving in the legions (at least before 212), as that would imply them to be citizens proper, the existence of such men among auxiliaries is highly plausible.

As for the recruitment issue, I'd be careful - we can observe that the Palmyrene units stationed on the Danube apparently get a steady influx of Palmyrene recruits even after 30 or so years, the same being apparently the case for those Palmyrenes serving in North Africa. I seem to recall - going purely from a not really useful memory, however - that the prosopographical evidence for auxiliary cohorts is actually quite ambiguous, with some units clearly dipping into local manpower for recruitment and others apparently having long-standing connections to the communities where the unit was originally raised.

[Red Orc]

I agree that some auxilliary units had long-standing connections to their territories of origin; but my understanding (which may be wrong of course!) is that this was quite rare; and generally (which is why I put 'generally' and 'probably' in the original post!) recruitment after the first generation would be local.

Of course you're right that before the Edict of Caracalla, there would be few black legionaries as only citizens could be legionaries and the majority of citizens were from Italy; and therefore they would have been rare (though perhaps not unknown, as some Egyptians were no doubt made citizens in the 250 years between the time of Caesar and the time of Caracalla, and some of these Egyptians are likely to have been very dark skinned).

[cram]

Thanks for the replies, its been very interesting reading.

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

Yes, twelve years late to this conversation but just want to add that Cheddar Man (the oldest mummy found in the British Isles from 40k years ago) was found by recent DNA testing to be a blue-eyed, black man. Ancient Britains or Cruthni and other aboriginal tribes,s not necessarily ‘Milesian’ or proto-celts ( perhaps the source of many faerie folk tales), may well have had large numbers of dark skinned people who weren’t that much less distant from African ancestry than the obvious Caucasian peoples of Britain.

[cadbren]

Yes, twelve years late to this conversation but just want to add that Cheddar Man (the oldest mummy found in the British Isles from 40k years ago) was found by recent DNA testing to be a blue-eyed, black man. Ancient Britains or Cruthni and other aboriginal tribes,s not necessarily ‘Milesian’ or proto-celts ( perhaps the source of many faerie folk tales), may well have had large numbers of dark skinned people who weren’t that much less distant from African ancestry than the obvious Caucasian peoples of Britain.

No, Cheddar man was not dark skinned. The researchers discovered that he had proteins for skin pigmentation that occurred amongst modern African populations rather than the proteins responsible for fair skin amongst modern Europeans. That doesn't mean he had dark skin given the diverse skin colours that exist in modern Africa and the researchers themselves said as much. The Swedish artist who reconstructed the skull chose a very dark skin colour which isn't backed by the science and is highly unlikely for a population living next to the European ice sheets for thousands of years. Dark skin typically exists around the equatorial regions. When you consider that east asians also have light skin which is caused by different proteins to the ones causing European light skin then the causes of skin pigmentation are not well understood which was also admitted by the scientists conducting the research. There are also variations in skin colour in various animals ranging from light to dark which have nothing to do with pigmentation in human skin.
The other issue is that the Yamnaya population that introduced the Indo-European languages into Europe and are thought to be responsible for the majority of male bloodlines today were thought to be darker skinned than modern Europeans though again I'm not sure what that's based on.
Blue eyes are thought to have developed around the Black Sea region which is also where the Yamnaya came from. For populations along the Atlantic fringes of Europe to have blue eyes would suggest some earlier contact with these people, perhaps before the modern skin pigmentation proteins had developed amongst the ancestors of the Yamnaya. This could be similar to how these same populations were originally lactose intolerant but after settling in Europe for around a thousand years they developed a tolerance for lactose which is very common amongst modern European populations today.
I would expect Cheddar Man to have been 'tanned', similar to modern North African populations. The other issue with that reconstruction is that the facial features cannot accurately be known from the skull alone. When forensic scientists do facial reconstructions for police work they work using databases of likely population groups the skull came from. Meaning someone with only European ancestry and someone with mixed ancestry from say an African ancestor might have skulls that both suggest a person of fully European ancestry. Without knowing the person may have come from a mixed group the reconstruction could be quite wrong. The nose of the latest reconstruction of Cheddar Man was entirely the artists imagination as only the basic nose size and position can be known. Things like nostril width and shape are soft tissue and cannot be known but it would be reasonable to assume features close to those of modern Europeans than the ones given.

[Freddy]

This could be similar to how these same populations were originally lactose intolerant but after settling in Europe for around a thousand years they developed a tolerance for lactose which is very common amongst modern European populations today.

I never quite understood how this went.
-Dad, why are we drinking milk?
-So that we could develop a tolerance for the lactose.
-But when? We shit our pants twice a day.
-Patience, this might take one or two thousand years.

Regarding the original topic, it must've been quite rare to have them in the actual legions, even among those who were recruited from Egypt. Ancient Egyptians looked more like present day South Europeans: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/3d-reconstruction-ancient-egyptian-mummies-180978786/
The medieval North African states had black soldiers, but that was a very different era as the Islamic conquest made a lot of bridges through the Sahara both as cultural
connections and also as forming well established states able to run large scale trading enterprises.

[ithoriel]

I can't find the reference now, of course, but I remember reading a reference to an ancient author describing the Indians encountered by Alexander as being "light skinned, like the Egyptians."

If anyone knows the reference and can cite it I'd be grateful, even if it turns out not to say what I remember!!

So it is likely that most, though probably not all, Egyptian based Roman citizens would look much like native Italians.

As for the 212 date, I'd just like to point out that Auxiliaries who served their full term became citizens. Their sons would have been eligible to serve in the legions. Auxiliaries made up somewhere around 50% of the Roman Army iirc.

So if Nubians enlisted as auxiliaries then there may have been a steady trickle of dark skinned legionaries a generation later?

[Maniac]

Well, remember Numidia is still North Africa.  They would have looked more like modern Algerians, Egyptians, Syrians, Lebanese, etc.

See various sculptures from of Numidian kings:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juba_II
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juba_I_of_Numidia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masinissa

They are heavily intermarried with Carthaginians who are of Phoenician descent.  So yes, some folks would have been quite dark from surrounding tribal intermarriage, but in general likely not a large portion.

[Cat]

There is one reference in the [somewhat generally unreliable] Historia Augusta about Severus meeting a certain black soldier, also with an implication there could have been more.  Roman and Greek sources refer to all blacks as Ethiopian.  This would have been in Britain, c.208–211

The author doesn't specify Legion or Auxilia, the language is just 'a certain Aethiop from the military' "Aethiops quidam e numero militari". 

[SirRoystonPapworth]

I am not sold on the whole Sub Saharan Romans idea.

Loads off Mediterranean types..  No Africans though, or at least not in anywhere near significant numbers.

The only point that Rome touches ‘Africa Proper’ is Egypt. So we are expecting a large enough non-mixed (with the local population) group of people who can sustain whole units of Roman Auxilaries  that then get sent all across the Empire? Just don’t see it.

At most a small unit or two of local auxiliaries deployed in Egypt, but that’s it.
I just don’t see the German Scenario, there isn’t the population migration.

[Mammoth miniatures]

I never quite understood how this went.
-Dad, why are we drinking milk?
-So that we could develop a tolerance for the lactose.
-But when? We shit our pants twice a day.
-Patience, this might take one or two thousand years.

Hunger is a great motivator.