5 ms·

Fascinating article. It's pretty ironic that Roman aristocrats are so often depicted by white, British actors, in no small part because that fits Americans' me

Fascinating article. It's pretty ironic that Roman aristocrats are so often depicted by white, British actors, in no small part because that fits Americans' mental image of what an aristocrat is.

jmeister 5y ago
Well, there is nothing stopping other cultures from depicting Roman aristocrats in their own image. Indian gods and historical figures are usually depicted as fair, in their own, contemporary art.
- pastage 5y ago
  Except missing it, I notice that you are not disagreeing with the point. Lots of contemporary indian culture features fair skinned people in the main role. For the same general reason.
  - wdb 5y ago
    I always thought fair skin in parts of the world meant that you weren't working class (e.g. worked outside in the sun)
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    Many Indians today believe in the Aryan invasion theory, which views Indian culture and religion as having originated from people living in modern-day Central/Southern Asia and Iran, and only later being adopted by native people in India. This theory is often connected with a view that fairer-skinned people represent "true" Indian culture, not the natives who were generally relegated to lower social status. The caste system itself is not native to India but is instead found widely among PIE cultures, including the Aryans who are said to have invaded India.
    - cabalamat 5y ago
      > Many Indians today believe in the Aryan invasion theory That's because it's almost certainly true! it's why Indians speak Indo-European languages, and why the same Y-chromosome haplogroup (R1a) is common among (for example) Indian Brahmins and Norwegians. > This theory is often connected with a view that fairer-skinned people represent "true" Indian culture The Hindu religion in its most ancient form (see e.g. the Rig Veda) derives from the Proto-Indo-European religion, parts of which have been reconstructed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_mythology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_mythology (Obviously modern India culture comes from a lot of other sources too!) > including the Aryans who are said to have invaded India. You phrase it that was as if to imply that it didn't happen. But I think the evidence that it did: linguistic, genetic, archeological, is very strong.
      - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
        Sure, but likely by the time the Aryans got to that region they were not "fair skinned." There was an intervening millennia of hanging out in the Caspian / Bactria / Central Asia before entering the subcontinent [1]. Nor were the Yamnaya people ever really "fair skinned" ; they were likely dark haired and olive skinned. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bactria%E2%80%93Margiana_Archaeological_Complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bactria%E2%80%93Margiana_Archa...
      - Mediterraneo10 5y ago
        > That's because it's almost certainly true! Actual Indo-Europeanists today eschew the label "Aryan invasion theory" in favour of e.g. “Aryan migration theory”. While genetic evidence makes a (limited) case for presence of force and population movement in the spread of the Indo-European languages to India, the bulk of the spread was through language shift whereby the indigenous inhabitants gradually adopted Indo-European languages as higher prestige.
rjknight 5y ago
It's also the case that many British theatrical productions, going back at least to the time of Shakespeare, were based on Roman history. Many of our ideas of how Romans spoke, look, and acted come through a prism of Shakesperean-era dramatisation, and later reinterpretations of these plays, rather than a bottom-up evaluation of the historical, social, ethnographic, and political context.
zozbot234 5y ago
I'm not sure that the Roman senatorial elite is properly described as an 'aristocracy', since ancestry had become less and less relevant wrt. social status even as early as the late Republic. Wealth and social connections became a lot more important at some point, but people from different backgrounds could acquire those with comparable ease. Of course citizenship status still mattered, but that was gradually extended over time as well. Ancient Rome seems to have been a remarkably open society by the standards of their time.
- Koncopd 5y ago
  Do you mean patricians? Because senatorial elite and senators in general were not become less relevant during the republic, as a roman became a senator after he took the office of a quaestor, the first position in the line of roman public service offices. And it wasn't limited to patricians only, for the most important offices there were no restrictions for plebeians, though there were some special positions for patricians only and for plebeians only. Examples - Cicero was a plebeian, even a novus homo (a politician without senators among his ancestors); Cato the Younger, one of the leaders of the optimates (traditionalist fraction in the senate), was a plebeian, though a member of plebeian aristicracy, descendant of Cato the Censor. Edit: i think i misread your comment, so there is no arguing with you actually.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
TacticalCoder 5y ago
Roman aristocracy two thousands years ago was pretty much looking like people from northern Italy today no!? If anything Augustus looks to be modern eastern european (from its famous statue). What's not correct about "white" when depicting roman aristocracy? From all the statues we have they were certainly neither asians nor black nor from india nor descendants of, say, the aztecs. Here's a reconstruction using AI of 30 roman emperors and I'd say 27 of them look totally white. https://www.boredpanda.com/realistic-recreations-ancient-sculptures-of-roman-emperors-haroun-binous https://www.boredpanda.com/realistic-recreations-ancient-scu... Heck, they even made Augustus with blond hairs and blue eyes (I have no idea if that's correct: all I can say his is marble statues looks like the modern easter european type to me). Now I can understand they didn't sound british when speaking, but I don't see why you write "white, british actors". If anything, and there's nothing racist in there, "black british actors" would have been weird no!? Or maybe you meant to say most of the aristocracy probably had the "mediterranean" type? (which I don't think is true and which, anyway, is classified under "white" I think?) EDIT: TIL: Augustus' biographer, Suetonius, wrote that Augustus indeed had golden hair and clear eyes. This comes at a surprise to me.
- michaelpb 5y ago
  As a history buff, my understanding is there were no "White" or "Black" people then, since these races hadn't been invented yet. Black British actors would have been fine as well, since neither race existed. Creation of these distinct races in such a cosmopolitan society as existed in many eras of the Roman Empire, where ethnic groups frequently move shockingly long distances, would require a system of racial segregation that has no historical evidence. That's not to say there was no ethnicity-based prejudice -- quite the opposite, it was an era defined by it -- but it wasn't focused on skin color. I happened to read a relevant passage on this a few weeks ago by Erik Jensen in his book Barbarians in the Greek and Roman World. In explaining how ethnicity worked in the ancient world, he gives the example of how the Greek historian Herodutus argued that the Colchians of the Black Sea were of the same "ethnicity" as Egyptians. Whether or not there was a connection is a different question, but how it was argued is more interesting, since it reveals the mentality of the time. He dismisses arguments made based on skin-tone as a red-herring since people can have all different appearances and be part of different cultures, but instead focuses on language and cultural customs (notably circumcision). If we believe his account, then if Colchians were to time-travel to modern times, most of them might be considered "Black", despite that most people living in that region today would be considered "White" -- but they were considered neither at the time, they were just "Colchians" that (according to Herodotus) had moved from Egypt

Fascinating article. It's pretty ironic that Roman aristocrats are so often depicted by white, British actors, in no small part because that fits Americans' mental image of what an aristocrat is.

jmeister 5y ago

Well, there is nothing stopping other cultures from depicting Roman aristocrats in their own image. Indian gods and historical figures are usually depicted as fair, in their own, contemporary art.

pastage 5y ago
Except missing it, I notice that you are not disagreeing with the point. Lots of contemporary indian culture features fair skinned people in the main role. For the same general reason.
- wdb 5y ago
  I always thought fair skin in parts of the world meant that you weren't working class (e.g. worked outside in the sun)
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Many Indians today believe in the Aryan invasion theory, which views Indian culture and religion as having originated from people living in modern-day Central/Southern Asia and Iran, and only later being adopted by native people in India. This theory is often connected with a view that fairer-skinned people represent "true" Indian culture, not the natives who were generally relegated to lower social status. The caste system itself is not native to India but is instead found widely among PIE cultures, including the Aryans who are said to have invaded India.
  - cabalamat 5y ago
    > Many Indians today believe in the Aryan invasion theory That's because it's almost certainly true! it's why Indians speak Indo-European languages, and why the same Y-chromosome haplogroup (R1a) is common among (for example) Indian Brahmins and Norwegians. > This theory is often connected with a view that fairer-skinned people represent "true" Indian culture The Hindu religion in its most ancient form (see e.g. the Rig Veda) derives from the Proto-Indo-European religion, parts of which have been reconstructed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_mythology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_mythology (Obviously modern India culture comes from a lot of other sources too!) > including the Aryans who are said to have invaded India. You phrase it that was as if to imply that it didn't happen. But I think the evidence that it did: linguistic, genetic, archeological, is very strong.
    - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
      Sure, but likely by the time the Aryans got to that region they were not "fair skinned." There was an intervening millennia of hanging out in the Caspian / Bactria / Central Asia before entering the subcontinent [1]. Nor were the Yamnaya people ever really "fair skinned" ; they were likely dark haired and olive skinned. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bactria%E2%80%93Margiana_Archaeological_Complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bactria%E2%80%93Margiana_Archa...
    - Mediterraneo10 5y ago
      > That's because it's almost certainly true! Actual Indo-Europeanists today eschew the label "Aryan invasion theory" in favour of e.g. “Aryan migration theory”. While genetic evidence makes a (limited) case for presence of force and population movement in the spread of the Indo-European languages to India, the bulk of the spread was through language shift whereby the indigenous inhabitants gradually adopted Indo-European languages as higher prestige.

rjknight 5y ago

It's also the case that many British theatrical productions, going back at least to the time of Shakespeare, were based on Roman history. Many of our ideas of how Romans spoke, look, and acted come through a prism of Shakesperean-era dramatisation, and later reinterpretations of these plays, rather than a bottom-up evaluation of the historical, social, ethnographic, and political context.

zozbot234 5y ago

I'm not sure that the Roman senatorial elite is properly described as an 'aristocracy', since ancestry had become less and less relevant wrt. social status even as early as the late Republic. Wealth and social connections became a lot more important at some point, but people from different backgrounds could acquire those with comparable ease. Of course citizenship status still mattered, but that was gradually extended over time as well. Ancient Rome seems to have been a remarkably open society by the standards of their time.

Koncopd 5y ago
Do you mean patricians? Because senatorial elite and senators in general were not become less relevant during the republic, as a roman became a senator after he took the office of a quaestor, the first position in the line of roman public service offices. And it wasn't limited to patricians only, for the most important offices there were no restrictions for plebeians, though there were some special positions for patricians only and for plebeians only. Examples - Cicero was a plebeian, even a novus homo (a politician without senators among his ancestors); Cato the Younger, one of the leaders of the optimates (traditionalist fraction in the senate), was a plebeian, though a member of plebeian aristicracy, descendant of Cato the Censor. Edit: i think i misread your comment, so there is no arguing with you actually.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

TacticalCoder 5y ago

Roman aristocracy two thousands years ago was pretty much looking like people from northern Italy today no!? If anything Augustus looks to be modern eastern european (from its famous statue). What's not correct about "white" when depicting roman aristocracy? From all the statues we have they were certainly neither asians nor black nor from india nor descendants of, say, the aztecs. Here's a reconstruction using AI of 30 roman emperors and I'd say 27 of them look totally white. https://www.boredpanda.com/realistic-recreations-ancient-sculptures-of-roman-emperors-haroun-binous https://www.boredpanda.com/realistic-recreations-ancient-scu... Heck, they even made Augustus with blond hairs and blue eyes (I have no idea if that's correct: all I can say his is marble statues looks like the modern easter european type to me). Now I can understand they didn't sound british when speaking, but I don't see why you write "white, british actors". If anything, and there's nothing racist in there, "black british actors" would have been weird no!? Or maybe you meant to say most of the aristocracy probably had the "mediterranean" type? (which I don't think is true and which, anyway, is classified under "white" I think?) EDIT: TIL: Augustus' biographer, Suetonius, wrote that Augustus indeed had golden hair and clear eyes. This comes at a surprise to me.

michaelpb 5y ago
As a history buff, my understanding is there were no "White" or "Black" people then, since these races hadn't been invented yet. Black British actors would have been fine as well, since neither race existed. Creation of these distinct races in such a cosmopolitan society as existed in many eras of the Roman Empire, where ethnic groups frequently move shockingly long distances, would require a system of racial segregation that has no historical evidence. That's not to say there was no ethnicity-based prejudice -- quite the opposite, it was an era defined by it -- but it wasn't focused on skin color. I happened to read a relevant passage on this a few weeks ago by Erik Jensen in his book Barbarians in the Greek and Roman World. In explaining how ethnicity worked in the ancient world, he gives the example of how the Greek historian Herodutus argued that the Colchians of the Black Sea were of the same "ethnicity" as Egyptians. Whether or not there was a connection is a different question, but how it was argued is more interesting, since it reveals the mentality of the time. He dismisses arguments made based on skin-tone as a red-herring since people can have all different appearances and be part of different cultures, but instead focuses on language and cultural customs (notably circumcision). If we believe his account, then if Colchians were to time-travel to modern times, most of them might be considered "Black", despite that most people living in that region today would be considered "White" -- but they were considered neither at the time, they were just "Colchians" that (according to Herodotus) had moved from Egypt