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.