Frank Snowden lecture, "The Negro Contribution to Greek and Roman Architecture," at the University of Iowa, December 13, 1971

Speaker 1: The following is an address by Professor Frank Snowden, Chairman of the Department of Classics at Howard University, recorded December 13th, 1971. Professor Snowden speaks on the Negro Contribution to Greek and Roman Architecture. Introducing Professor Snowden is Charles T. Davis, Chairman of the Afro-American Studies program at the University of Iowa. Charles T. Davi...: I am pleased to introduce the final lecturer in our Festival of Black Art, Professor Frank Snowden, the Chairman of Classics at Howard University. His coming reminds us sharply of the reason for launching this festival at all. That is to say, the arrival in the University Museum of an impressive collection of art objects by contemporary Black American artists. That exhibit celebrates a Black contribution now, as we approach the end of the year 1971. It makes all the more important the demonstration of a Black contribution earlier. As early, indeed, as the foundations of Western civilization in Greek and Roman culture. It is not quite true, fortunately, that what we are is what we were, but we certainly cannot understand what we are unless we know where we have been. Charles T. Davi...: Mr. Snowden has three degrees from Harvard, a fact his friends have never let him forget. He has taught the classics with eloquence and skill at Virginia State College, Atlanta University, and Howard University, building indeed a tradition in his students within environments which were not always favorable to classics or humane letters, in general. He was a dozen years Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Howard during the period of expansion, academic crisis, and student revolution, for which he deserves, at the least, you see, a good conduct medal. Charles T. Davi...: He is as well-known abroad as he is in America. His connection with Italy was a particularly intimate one, where, at various times, he was a Fulbright research scholar, specialist lecturer for the Department of State, cultural attache in the American embassy in Rome, and he was a recipient of the Medaglia D'Oro, the medal of gold, not the name really of the American espresso coffee by that name, in 1958 from the Italian government for contribution in the field of Italian culture and education. Charles T. Davi...: His name lives still in the minds of Romans. In 1966 and 1967, when I was myself a Fulbrighter in Italy. His diplomatic services were not limited to Italy. He has been a lecturer for the Department of State in West Africa, Libya, Greece, Austria, India, and Brazil. He was a member of the American delegation to the 10th and the 11th general conferences of UNESCO in Paris in 1958 and 1960. A visiting lecturer for the Foreign Service Institute of the Department of State during the years 1956 to '62 and '66 to '68. Charles T. Davi...: Lately, other honors have come his way. He's been the President of the Washington Society of the Archeological Institute of America, fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities for Research in North Africa in 1970, visiting scholar of the University Center in Virginia, 1971-'72, a member of the Committee on International Exchange of Persons during 1970-'71. The enduring interest for Mr. Snowden, however, of his academic career, from his graduate years at Harvard, came to fulfillment in the publication of Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience, published by the Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press in 1970. Charles T. Davi...: I take great personal pleasure in introducing Mr. Snowden. I've known him my whole life. Indeed, when I talked to my mother on Saturday, she instructed me to greet warmly my father's godchild. I do, and I present him proudly to you to greet him warmly, as well. Professor Frank Snowden. Frank Snowden: I'll take it from here, Charlie. Thank you very much, for Professor Davis. It is indeed an honor for me to be here, and although we in the humanities have a very strong tradition which more or less supports itself without the aid of audiovisual aids, we will not be as effective as we should be, because I had this lecture timed so that it can be done really in about 50 minutes if I don't ad-lib too longly. But this time, my friend Bob is going to change these slides, and there are many of them, as you shall see, for the purposes indicated, by some sort of signals that we shall have developed, I hope, perfectly before we're through. Frank Snowden: The subject of my lecture is the Negro in Greek and Roman art. Negroes appear in every major period of classical art, yet historians and handbooks of Greek and Roman art have generally included only a few examples of Blacks, seldom more than two or three illustrations. Examples when they are given usually provide as illustrations the same few familiar pieces, with the resulting impression that the Negro was a rarity in classical art. There has been only one book, more than 40 years ago, published on the subject of the Negro in Greek and Roman art by itself. Although this was a pioneer effort, and a very important one, its defect was that it did not relate the various art pieces to the literary evidence. Frank Snowden: In general, two Negroid types have been the subject of archeological studies; the so-called true or pure African Negro who possesses Negroid physical traits in their most marked form, and a subtype frequently designated by some anthropologists as Nilotic, in which Negroid features are less pronounced. Concentrating on these, classical archeologists have paid less attention to those types which have resulted from racial crossings of Blacks with whites. As a consequence, the picture of Blacks in antiquity and of racial mixture attested by classical authors has been incomplete, thus obscuring evidence of importance to the historian and the anthropologist. Frank Snowden: There are obvious difficulties involved in classifying mixed Black-white types, and extreme caution is necessary in such a complex matter. At times, what seemed to be Negroid traits may be due merely to the range of physical characteristics obviously observable in white races, or the result of the stylistic bent of an individual artist. Although skeletal remains and anthropometric measurements would yield additional data, the information with respect to the kind of hair, form of lips, and breadth of nose in many representations of mixed types in Greek and Roman art is of considerable anthropological importance. In my identifications, I have designated as mixed or Negroid only those individuals for whom such a classification has seemed appropriate on the basis of the presence of a combination of physical traits deemed important by anthropologists. Frank Snowden: By concentrating on narrow aspects of the Negro in classical art, and by failing to relate specialized studies to the Ethiopians of classical texts, archeologists and art historians have tended at times to draw conclusions not supported by the evidence. I should give an explanation of Ethiopians as used in the classical text. The word means literally dark-faced or Black-faced, and it was used by the Greeks and Romans to those dark and Black-skinned peoples who originated in Africa, below Egypt, below the first cataract, and below Roman North Africa, and spread from there over various parts of the Greek and Roman world. Frank Snowden: In this lecture, I shall consider the significance of the Negro's portrayal in classical art within the broad framework of what is known of Blacks in classical antiquity. What does Greek and Roman art reveal, for example, with respect to points such as these. When were Negroes first depicted in European art? What were the occasions and under what circumstances did Greeks and Romans come into contact with Negroes? From what parts of Africa, and at what time, did Negroes come to Greece and Italy? What were the physical characteristics of the Ethiopians mentioned so frequently in Greco-Roman records? What is revealed with respect to race mixture? What information is provided as to the participation of the Negro in Greco-Roman society? To what extent is their iconographical confirmation of written sources? Frank Snowden: It is on points such as these that the archeological evidence provides an important commentary, confirming and complementing in a most vivid manner many a passage in our literary sources. I shall present the evidence more or less chronologically, beginning with a few examples from Crete, Thera, and Pylos. There will be a number of slides and it's very important that I show this rather large number because it's only through evidence such as this, that has never been presented anywhere else, that I can make the points that I should like to. Frank Snowden: The population of southern Crete may have included a Negroid element during the early Minoan period, some time between 2800 and 2500. The first slide please, and after that I will gesticulate, Bob. The presence of such an element from Africa has been argued on the basis of an inlay of shell now before you, depicted on a bearded face with thick lips and snub nose. Although it is difficult to determine precisely the significance of this and other early evidence of Negroes outside Africa, scholars are in greater agreement with respect to their interpretation of the coal Black Negroid spearmen who appear in a fragment of a fresco which Evans called The Captain of the Blacks. Belonging to late Minoan, too, around 1450 BC. Frank Snowden: This fresco depicts a Minoan captain not shown here, and a file of Black men similarly dressed, who have been regarded as Minoan mercenaries or auxiliaries. This appearance of Blacks in Crete is of the greatest significance for the role of Black Africans in the history of the early Mediterranean, a role often overlooked. It is part of an Ethiopian military tradition harking back to Egyptian employment of Black soldiers, an example of which is provided by the wooden models of 40 Black archers shown in the next slide, found in a tomb of an Egyptian prince of perhaps the Middle Kingdom around 2000. Frank Snowden: Ethiopian skill in archery was known to Herodotus, the historian of the fifth century, who specifically calls attention to the dexterity of the king of the Ethiopian, Macrobiai, in handling the bow. As will become clear from examples I shall show, Blacks found their way throughout various parts of the later Greek and Roman world as mercenaries. Important additions to our knowledge of Negroes in pre-classical Greece have been made by recent archeological discoveries. Through a fragmentary fresco before you, to be dated between 1500 and 1500 BC, discovered in excavations at Thera in the Southern Aegean above Crete in 1968, we've become acquainted with the oldest Theran so far known. He is, as you see, a young man whose black wavy hair, thick lips, and broad nose are clearly shown. Frank Snowden: Those stating that the pug nose and thick lips of the figure suggest a Nigredo or a Nubian. S. Marinatos, who made the discovery, avoids a precise anthropological definition, and concludes that the characteristics of the local dignitary or foreign visitor seemed to indicate an African. In my judgment, however, and I've checked this out with anthropologists, a classification of the Theran as Negroid, that is to say a Black-white extraction, should not be excluded. Frank Snowden: Also to be noted from this early period are fragmentary frescoes of the second half of the 13th century BC from the Palace of Nestor at Pylos, depicting Blacks. In one fragment, in the next slide, there was a procession in which four white men wear lion skins while at least one black, the one on the slide, wears a three-tiered Minoan kilt. M. Lang, who has described these frescoes, suggest that the Negroes had come to the mainland under Minoan auspices and that their presence in Pylos can be explained in one of two ways. The possession was tributary or offertory. This evidence of Blacks in the painting, together with the fact that the equivalent of Aethiops, Ethiopian, is mentioned several times in the Pylos tablets which have recently been deciphered, about 1300 BC, point to a knowledge of Blacks before they appear more frequently in art from the late 7th century BC onwards. Frank Snowden: Not without significance also for the early pictorial record of Negroes is Homer's testimony as to the black-skinned wooly-haired Eurybates, the highly-respected herald of Odysseus mentioned in the 19th book of The Odyssey. A sound nucleus of fact, therefore, may be the basis of the combined literary and artistic evidence. Frank Snowden: I now turn to the seventh and sixth centuries BC. It was in Egypt that the Greeks of the seventh and sixth centuries BC met Negroes for the first time in large numbers. By the sixth century, Greeks were well-established in Naukratis in northern Egypt on the Nile delta, where they had ample opportunity for contacts with Negroes. In fact, one of the earliest janiform Negro-white heads in the next slide, found in Cyprus, may reflect an acquaintance with the Greeks acquired with Negroes in Naukratis. The example, a late seventh-century tiny faience ointment vase juxtaposes a bearded white on the left and, on the right, a smooth-faced Negro with flat nose, thick lips, and wooly hair in the form of diamond-shaped blocks. Frank Snowden: Scarab seals from factories at Naukratis, of the early sixth century, in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, provide further evidence for Negroes in Naukratis at the time. Worthy of notice are the frontal scars in some of these figures. You can see them there, pointing to a practice which appeared in the form of facial scarification in early Meroitic remains. It's very interesting to note that Petronius, writing in the first century AD, in a very complete description of the Negroid type, mentions that in certain types of Ethiopians, there are these frontal scars which you see here. Frank Snowden: It was a Negro of the pronounced type whom Athenian artists used as models in the sixth century BC. A good example of a detailed study of a Negro of this period appears in the next slide, a vase of about 530 BC, in Boston, the one in the center. From the outside, the wooly hair of the Negro fascinated the artist, who in this case represented it by raised pellets of clay. This mug is a careful treatment of an older man whose wrinkles and crow feet betray his age. Frank Snowden: With interest in the Negro raised by Greek contacts with Egypt, artists in the sixth century turned to their mythological past, especially the Memnon theme. Memnon the king of the Ethiopians, which can be illustrated by episodes from the role of Memnon and Ethiopian soldiers on Black figure amphorae, about 540 BC. And by a Negro between two Amazons on a mid sixth century vase of the same type. I think I have a detail, yes, of the central figure in this slide. Frank Snowden: Apropos of an Ethiopian military tradition, it's to be noted that other Negros on sixth century vases who cannot be identified with certainty were also depicted as warriors. A new Negro with his cloak over his right shoulder and hanging down from both sides of his body appears on the interior of a red-figured vase, about 520, in the Louvre. Holding his shield in his left hand and a lance in his right, he advances on the run. A lekythos, another vase from Cumae in southern Italy, also portrays a heavily armed Negro warrior bending intently forward as he raises his round shield. Some have suggested that this Negro here was Memnon, although generally in early Greek painting, Memnon is depicted as white. Frank Snowden: Knowledge of Negro mercenaries was probably the source of inspiration to the sculptures who carved sixth century Negroid stone figures, not later than 560 BC, found in northwest Cyprus. These stone figures before you, interpreted as a record of Egyptian mercenaries who occupied the island under Amasis in the early sixth century, may provide a clue to a statement in Herodotus on the population of Cyprus that some Cypriots were Ethiopians. It's very interesting to look at the commentaries of Herodotus on this passage, who say that Herodotus of course went off the beam when he said that there were Ethiopians in Cyprus. But when the Swedes excavated, these Negroid figures were found, again proving that Herodotus was right, as he appears to have been right in so many instances. Frank Snowden: Early Greek artists were fascinated by the obvious differences between the physical characteristics of whites and Negros, and dramatized the contrast by placing them in juxtaposition, as we've already seen strikingly in the case of the tiny faience vase already mentioned. Several other Negro-white janiform head vases of the late sixth and early fifth centuries may have owed their origin to such a concept. A splendid example of such a juxtaposition is a Villa Giulia kantharos from Tarquinii, with Black and white checkers on a reserved ground. A similar interest in whites and Blacks as physical types was shown by Xenophanes, the philosopher and poet of the late sixth and early fifth century, who contrasted the flat nose and wooly hair of Ethiopians, and the blue eyes and red hair of Thracians. Again, this later developed into the environmental explanation of the origin of diversity in the various races of mankind. Frank Snowden: Although Egypt directly or indirectly was the probable origin of most Negroes who appeared in early Greek art, other parts of Africa should not be overlooked. Carthaginian-Sicilian contacts may explain the presence of the Negro in early Sicilian art. One of the earliest Greek objects revealing an intimate knowledge of the Negro's physical characteristics was found in Agrigentum. The fidelity with which the artist represented the Negroid features of a terra cotta mask of the late sixth or early fifth century BC attest an intimate acquaintance with his subject. Frank Snowden: In the summer of 1970, two other masks were found in Sicily. One from Naxos before you, and the next from Megara, which are now seen in the United States for the first time. Are the Negros in the art of this period evidence that Carthaginians included Negros among the mercenaries whom they enlisted from land distant and near? For example, when they were defeated at Himera in 480 BC by the combined forces of Gelon of Syracuse and Theron of Agrigentum? It is not at all unlikely, in light of the evidence for the presence of Blacks in north Africa, to which I shall turn a little later. Frank Snowden: Further, Frontinus when mentioning very Black auxiliaries among the Carthaginian prisoners captured by Gelon of Syracuse, though he wrote in the first century AD. They very well have preserved a record of Negro participation in Carthaginian campaigns in Sicily. So much for the late sixth, seventh, and early sixth centuries BC. Frank Snowden: How was the interest of fifth century artists and writers in the Negro to be explained? Ethiopians, the most wooly-haired men on Earth, according to Herodotus, fought in the Persian army with the Arabians in Xerxes' campaign of 480 and 479 BC. In addition, several references in Aeschylus seem to point to the participation of Blacks among Xerxes' warriors. It is difficult not to associate a series of small vases, alabaster, some 30 in all, generally dated between 480 and 460, depicting Negro warriors, with the wooly haired Ethiopians reported by Herodotus to have served with the Persian. There is no question about the African-ness and the Negroid-ness of this. It's very interesting that I found that very often, some archeologists as well as classicists have tried to explain away many of these. One explanation is that he was an eastern Ethiopian, and as you know they weren't Negroid even according to the definition of Herodotus. Frank Snowden: One of those janiform vases I showed you earlier, a recent explanation of the Negro in that is that this is some Negro from the east. But you remember, the interest the artists had depicting the wooly hair of that particular type. The actual ... Oh, here's another variant of that on the top of this vase, which is in Boston. Frank Snowden: The actual presence of Ethiopians on Greek soil during the Persian wars increased fifth century interest in the Negro, which was furthered as stories came back from Egypt. It was in such a setting that we find for the first time vases with the lower part forming a group of a Negro struggling with a crocodile, such as this Boston example, a motif popular also in the fourth and fourth century copies. Frank Snowden: The fifth century saw no diminution of interest in legends associated with the Negro. One of these involved Busiris, a king in Egypt who we're told sacrificed strangers on the altar of Zeus until he himself was killed by Heracles. The Busiris story was especially popular with vase painters, who included in a variety of the episodes not only Negroids of the so called pure anthropological type, but also several intended as mixed Black-white types. In an altar scene depicted on a vase, a pelike from Boeotia, about 475, the artist dramatically contrasts feature by feature a bearded black-haired leptorrhine Heracles, and three bald platyrrhine Ethiopians. Frank Snowden: It was a fleeing Busiris who appealed to the painter of a cup, a dish, kylix, in Ferrara about 480. A Busiris whose broad nose and hair rendered by big dots, a method frequently chosen in the fifth century to represent the tightly coiled spirals of the Negro's hair, indicated that the artist intended the barbarian king in this instance as Negroid. On still another vase, a Bologna stamnus of about 460, Heracles raises his hand to strike a fallen Busiris, whose short curly hair and slightly platyrrhine nose suggests that the painter conceived of both the king and his attendants in this case as Black-white crosses. Four youthful figures, whose less pronounced Negroid features, nose, lips, and especially the hair, also indicate racial mixture appear on a red-figured vase of about 450, showing a bound Heracles as he is led to an enthroned Busiris. In the next slide you see the other two mulatto types. Frank Snowden: During the fifth century, interest in the Negro had reached the point that playwrights were aware of the theatrical value of Ethiopians. The general setting of the Andromeda of Euripides can be judged, if M. Bieber is correct, by a scene on a vase from the end of the fifth century. Ethiopian and its people on this vase are represented by a member of the chorus now before you, attired in a tight jersey and a richly patterned chiton. This figure, whose mask depicts the features of a distinctly mulatto type, represents Ethiopia, the scene of the action, while the other actors have Greek physical traits. Frank Snowden: The theater may have likewise provided the motivation for another Andromeda seen on a red-figured hydria, about 430, which depicts preparations for the tying of Andromeda, daughter of Cepheus, king of Ethiopia. Eight mulattoes are participants in various aspects of the preparation, and there's a detail of one of these mulattoes in this slide. In Greek art, Andromeda was usually represented as white. In one instance, however, a Greek artist at the beginning of the fourth century perhaps conceived of her as Black. A vase in the form of a human head in the Ashmolean depicts a foreign woman whose flesh is Black, but other physical characteristics are Negroid only with respect to a slightly thickness of the lips. The woman, J.D. Beasley has suggested, was a dusky eastern princess, perhaps Andromeda. I've looked at this vase. The lips are rather thick, and J.D. Beasley says his feeling was that originally, this has been rubbed down, they were even thicker than they are there. Frank Snowden: The Busiris story, we know, was treated in various types of plays. Negro roles in other plays were also not unlikely. It has been suggested, for example, that some type of play was the inspiration for the scene of a Negroid victory, the one on your left here, this Nike who drives Heracles in a chariot, as conceived by the painter of an early fourth century oinochoe, a vase from Cyrenaica. In the light of the probably dramatic elements in that mysterious worship of the Cabeiri, the frequent presence of Negroes in cups, skyphoi, from the late fifth or early fourth century should be noted. In one instance, Odysseus appears. Next slide, please. Supported by a staff, bending over to receive the magic potion from a pronouncedly Negroid Circe, as you can see with the Greek letters above, one of whose victims has already been changed into a swine. Another vase of the same type, Circle, also Negroid, prepares the potion for her guest. Frank Snowden: The fact the Negroes appear on Greek coinage of important cities, in one instance with a helmeted goddess Athena on the obverse, and a Negro on the reverse, about 506. And on the obverse of little silver coins from Delphi, that important center of religion in the ancient world, has given rise to a number of interpretations. In the absence of more abundant evidence, certain identification is difficult to establish in such matters. Of the several explanations advanced, the view that the Negro was Delphos, the eponymous founder of Delphi, is to me the most convincing. The father of Delphos was Apollo according to one tradition and Poseidon to another. But all the variants of the mother's name except one are derivatives of words meaning Black. Melantho, Melaina, Melanis, [Melano], and so forth. Frank Snowden: These terms, a study of the color words as used in Greek literature reveals, were employed at times as an equivalent of Ethiopian, particularly when supported by additional evidence. The significance of this equivalence has been overlooked in all the discussions that I've ever read of Delphos's identity. Further, Delphos according to one tradition came to Phocis from Crete, where Blacks had been known as early as Minoan times. It is not unreasonable to suggest, therefore, that the Greeks influenced by increase acquaintance with African Negros in the fifth century conceived of Delphos, whom they honored on their coinage, as Negro, the son of the Black woman. Frank Snowden: Like the Ethiopian slave of Theophrastus' man of petty ambition, some fifth century Negros seem also to have been employed and in demand as personal servants or attendants. The crouching or sleeping Negro, a type which was to become very popular in the Hellenistic and Roman period, may point to personal attendants resting or sleeping while waiting to accompany their masters home from banquets. Examples of this type are provided by gems, such as the carnelian ring stone, second half of the fifth century, carrying a nude sleeping Negro boy with short curly hair. Frank Snowden: The mulatto, whose un-Greek features are contrasted with those of a Greek woman, depicted on the same vase in a Greek scene on a vase of about 450, was probably a trusted maidservant. Even when working on a very small scale, fifth century artists were scrupulously faithful to the Negro's physical characteristics, as can be seen in the Negro trumpeter on the shield of a warrior appearing on an amphora, from Cerveteri about ... Next slide please. 480 BC. Here is a detail of the Negro in the next slide. One gem, the next slide please, sard scarab from the end of the fifth century, shows the head of a Negro woman wearing an earring. This is in Boston, and a beaded necklace with a pendant. This head, with its carefully delineated features in the judgment of G. M. A. Richter, is one of the finest representations of the Negro in Greek art. Frank Snowden: Negros appearing in sixth and early fifth century art we have seen, were usually of the pronounced Negro type described by anthropologists as pure or true. Toward the middle of the century, however, mulatto types began to appear more frequently. Examples have been shown of Osiris himself, his attendants participants in an Andromeda episode, a personification of Ethiopia as seen from tragedy, a dusky princess and a mulatto woman attending her mistress. The figures in question all possess distinctly less pronounced Negroid features than in the types represented earlier. The hair in particular was worthy of note, because the artist seemed to be attempting in all cases but one, that of the eastern princess, to represent the so-called frizzly hair which anthropologists describe as longer than the tightly coiled spirals or wooly hair of pure Negros. Frank Snowden: How is the appearance of the mixed type to be accounted for at this time? Aristotle's comments on the transmission of physical characteristics in the family of a woman from Elis who had a child by an Ethiopian attest Aristotle's awareness in the fourth century of crossings between Greek women and Ethiopians. Aristotle's interest in the physical traits of Black-white crosses was apparently shared by artists as early as the fifth century. The Negros who arrived, let us say in 480 BC in the army of Xerxes and remained as captives were apparently of the pronounced type. The children of these first arrivals by Greek women would be mixed, with reduced Negroid features. Frank Snowden: It was apparently such a mulatto type, often youthful as we have seen, which the painters of the vases after 460 mentioned above were depicting. The artists were beginning to notice the modification of physical characteristics of Black-white crosses, which were to be the subject of comment by the scientist Aristotle in the next century. By the fourth century, the grandchildren of fifth century mulattoes would be much less Negroid, and their great-grandchildren as they continued to mix with the native population would be rarely if ever distinguishable from the white majority. Frank Snowden: It is reasonable therefore to suggest that in the absence of any laws prohibiting unions of Blacks and whites, many descendants of fifth century Ethiopians were assimilated into the predominantly white population. The disappearance of Negroid physical traits, overlooked in all the discussions I've ever seen in classical studies, as a result of racial mixture can be illustrated by the absence of discernible Negroid physical features in a quadroon family shown in the next slide, taken from Caroline Day's study of some Negro-white families in the United States. There are no discernible physical Negroid traits there. Frank Snowden: Now for the fourth century. For Negroes in fourth century art, one must turn especially to Italy, although there are some objects of Sicilian provenance such as the terra cotta of an aged woman, about 350 found at Lipari. This was one of several terra cotta masks found in a tomb which have been related to Euripidean tragedies of the Trojan cycle. The woman whose racial characteristics have been realistically portrayed has been interpreted as the nurse of Astyanax, the son of Hector. Another terra cotta mask, life size in the British Museum, dated to the middle of the fourth century, is also of Sicilian provenance, as well as this female dancer of the mixed type in the next slide from Canicattini, standing on tiptoe on a fourth century calyx-krater. Frank Snowden: It was in Italy however, especially in the south, where the Negro enjoyed popularity in fourth century art. Actual models were apparently available to a greater extent than has been generally realized, and I might add here that there's been a tendency I think too often to regard all of these Negroes ... One reviewer of my book, for example, said, "The professor has overlooked, these are all just the same type of Negro." If you go through here, you'll see all Negroes may have looked alike to some people. But if you see here, these people really aren't all the same type. If you extrapolate, from the number that I've found, and I've got 250 or 300 of these, you'll notice the variety. That the artists were really fascinated in many instances by these different types. Frank Snowden: One of the most realistically portrayed women of the pronounced Negroid type in classical art comes from this period. A vase from Ruvo in southern Italy about 360 includes as a central figure, in a scene of dancing Maenads and a satyr, this nude woman, a detail of which is in the next slide. The detail of this woman shows that the artist was depicting a type described with amazing accuracy in the most comprehensive anthropological description of a Negro woman from classical antiquity, which comes from the Moretum, about the time of Vergil. It's sometimes ascribed to Vergil, but probably is not. The author of this says of this woman, "She was African in race, her whole figure proof of her country. Her hair tightly curled, lips thick, color dark, breasts pendulous, belly somewhat pinched, legs thin and feet broad and ample." Frank Snowden: A southern Italy vase, a lekythos, carries a profile of a Negro of another type, whose hair represented by tiny dots is reminiscent of the manner of fifth century vase painters which we've seen. A Negro dancer from Taranto, again southern Italy, from the fourth century, or perhaps a little later, is no less lively than that Ruvo dancer, nor less realistic as to physical features. The discovery just two or three summers ago at Paestum in southern Italy of a Black boxer, the one on the right, on the fresco of a tomb about 340 provides additional evidence attesting the presence of Blacks in Campania at that time. Frank Snowden: Another vase from Capua in the south of Italy demonstrates the artist's observation, again, of these frontal scars which we have seen from earlier examples were used by some Ethiopians as decoration or tribal marks. Head vases, like an example from Apulia in southern Italy from the second half of the fourth century or later indicate the special interest of artists in mixed Black-white types, evident from the reduced platyrrhiny and especially the hair. Frank Snowden: A terra cotta phiale, a dish decorated with Negro heads in combination with rows of acorns of unknown date has been found in a temple deposit at Locri in southern Italy. Perhaps this bowl is a copy of an earlier original, as has been suggested of the better known fourth century gold phiale before you, found at Panagyurishte in southern Bulgaria. This gold bowl, here's a detail of it, of the late fourth century, which combines three concentric circles of Negroes, 24 in each with a row of palmettes and one of acorns, has been considered a replica of a well known piece mentioned by Pausanias, who tells us that a statue of the goddess of retribution Nemesis at Rhamnus, not far from Marathon, held in its right hand a phiale on which Ethiopians were carved. Frank Snowden: In a number of markedly similar Etruscan head vases from the late fifth and early fourth centuries BC, the prognathism and platyrrhiny are considerably less than in fifth century heads, although the thickness of lips is often pronounced. The hair, however, is now often in the form of raised spirals, perhaps a result of the artist's attempt to represent the less tightly curled hair found in some Black-white crosses. The modified Negroid features somewhat stylized in these obviously popular Etruscan heads give the impression, in spite of the rather thick lips in some of them, that the artists were aware that their models differed from other more Negroid types of whom they had knowledge. Frank Snowden: Zeus-Ammon, on the coinage ... Next slide, please. Of Cyrenaica, about ... That's north Africa, about 400 BC, has been regarded on the basis of the hair and cast of countenance as Negroid by C. T. Seltman, whose opinion is worthy of consideration in light of the not uncommon fusion of Blacks and whites in north Africa, a subject to which I shall revert in my discussion of north Africa in the Roman period. Frank Snowden: I now turn to the Hellenistic period. The popularity of the Negro in Hellenistic studios is what would be expected from artists interested in the un-Greekness of foreign types. The Ptolemies, as a result of their commercial policies and military activities, extended their acquaintance with Ethiopia and Ethiopians living south of Egypt, in the regions along the Red Sea. The extent of representations of the Negro, realistic and semi-portrait, in themselves suggest that Blacks constituted a much larger element in the population of Alexandria and of the Hellenistic world than has been generally realized. Frank Snowden: The anguish of features, the naturalistic portrayal of subjects in a variety of moods and movements, the engaging studies of children and single figures, all these aspects that interested Hellenistic artists who worked especially in terra cotta and bronze were not lacking those craftsmen who chose Negroes as models. The choroplast of a small terra cotta head of the early Ptolemaic period, intrigued by the true Negro, emphasized, and I have it in quotes, "the Negro-ness of his subject," by the strongly everted lips, the hair in the form of tiny circular dots incised in the clay, a rather unusual treatment, and two frontal scars. You can see the one on the right. I found this in the ... It's never been published before. It's in the Ashmolean museum, and the place for the scar on the left is there, although the protuberance is gone. Here's a profile of it, which shows these features I've just mentioned. Frank Snowden: Use of the less pronounced Negroid type, which some anthropologists designate as Nilotic, served as models for small bronzes, markedly similar as to general contour of features and treatment of the hair, arranged in rows of corkscrew curls. Here is one in the British Museum, and there are several views of it in the next slide. Again, you see this is a type different from those we've seen earlier, and here is one that has never been published before also in the next slide, and I have a profile of that. That's in Museo Archeologico in Florence. Frank Snowden: Two unusual heads, a slightly under life size head of dark great marble which the Brooklyn Museum purchased just recently, and said it comes from south of Asia Minor. Let's look at the next slide please. Dated to the second century, is probably a soldier or official in the administration of a Greek ruler. Here is another over life size statue, in this case, the basalt head from Egypt, about 80 to 50 BC. Some date it even later than that. Frank Snowden: The majority of Negros in Hellenistic art regarded as a medium fall into several categories. Standing, men or boys, some nude, others draped. Squatting or crouched figures, seating and kneeling figures, dancers and others in action, and a miscellaneous group. Perhaps by far the best known statuette of a standing Negro, next slide please, from this period, is a nude figure in the Bibliotheque Nationale of a youthful musician, found at Chalon-sur-Saône in France, whose left arm seems to have held a musical instrument. The artist has chosen a graceful pose for his lithe subject, with his body gently bent at the waist, has made effective use of the hands, next slide please, and by careful attention to detail has created a sense of the face that ranks among the best in Hellenistic art. Frank Snowden: One of the finest bronzes of the standing type is a statuette of a young boy in the Metropolitan whose otherwise nude body is covered only by a mantle twisted gracefully around the waist. Two standing draped boys deserved to be ranked among our best Hellenistic bronzes. The first one is from Boston, a princely lad, probably a student. Cornelius Vermeule has suggested that this was a student, and I add to it, perhaps a series in this posture as a later Memnon, the Negro foster son of Herodes Atticus, that influential patron of learning in the second century AD. Frank Snowden: The other bronze in the next slide, found at Bodrum, Turkey, is a statue ... Oh, I'm sorry. This is a profile of the earlier one. May I have the next slide please? This one was found at Bodrum, this boy with the slightly protruding stomach. You can see in both cases, these were of the mixed type. May I have the next slide, please. Frank Snowden: Yeah. Squatting or crouched Negroes were a favorite motif in Hellenistic times. The very number of figures of this kind appearing as early as the fourth century suggest that Negroes were in demand as personal attendants. In view of the popularity of this type of figure, it is not strange that the result was the creation of several masterpieces in this style. One of these terra cottas, the one before you, found in Egypt is that of a sleeping Negro boy, almost certainly a fragment of a lamp. Another splendid example is a terra cotta of a boy sleeping beside an amphora, this is in the Ashmolean. The entire conception of this piece, according to one critic, for lifelike realism and true pathos is probably without a rival among Greek terra cottas. Frank Snowden: The penchant of the Hellenistic artist for a variety of moods and movements led him to turn to other styles such as seated and kneeling figures. Next slide please. The Negro Spinario from Priene may not be as well known as the famous boy picking the thorn, but this was inspired by this sculpture, and has been regarded as a creation of unusual charm, and transferred by the choroplast into a human document and a sympathetic study of a racial type. And we change the carousel, please. Frank Snowden: The movements of Negro entertainers, dancers or jugglers provided artists with an opportunity for creating engaging studies of un-Greek types in action. In one instance, the one before you, a dancer executing a graceful step was a subject of a study in bronze. Next slide. Satyr-like leaps of Ethiopian war dances were well known, were mentioned by Heliodorus. It was probably some such wild moment that attracted the eye of this artist, responsible for this bronze found at Carnuntum. Frank Snowden: A terra cotta juggler in the next slide, from Thebes, clad in a simple tunic, stands on one foot, and you can see intently concerned with his act. By far the best known Hellenistic statue of a mixed Black-white type in a momentary pose is that of a jockey in the next slide from Artemisium in the Athens museum. Agile, tense, anxiously straining in an apparent effort to ride his mount to victory. I remember once going over some of these slides with that great student of Greek art, Miss G. M. A Richter, and she said to me, "I notice that you have the jockey in this collection. You consider that he's mixed or Negroid?" I said yes. "Has anyone else said that but you?" She said in her inquiring manner. She said, "It's very interesting. I've always been puzzled by what I consider the non-Greekness or the un-Greekness of this jockey, and you probably have a good point," or words to that effect. Frank Snowden: The popularity of the Negro in Hellenistic art, the understanding of the life of this un-Greek people in alien lands, and the care and skill with which Blacks were portrayed, represent the cosmopolitanism of the age and suggest that the sentiment of the kinship of all men as expressed by Menander and adapted later by Terence, "I am a man, I consider nothing human foreign to me," was not limited to philosopher or dramatist. I now turn to the Roman period. Frank Snowden: Plautus, about 254 to 184, the first Roman author to mention Blacks, in one instance seems to suggest the presence of Ethiopians on Italian soil. The bucket carriers at the circus mentioned by Plautus in a passage from The Little Carthaginian have been interpreted as Ethiopians. A roughly contemporary commentary on a possibly physical type intended by Plautus's Blacks is provided by the physical traits of a Negro appearing on the obverse, with an elephant on the reverse, of a third century Etruscan coinage. Next slide, please. There is the Negro, and let's see if we don't get the elephant. Yes, there's the elephant, and the next slide I have them together. Frank Snowden: Now, dates as suggested for these bronzes have been as early as the middle of the third century and as late as 207. Those who argue for the earlier date relate the coins to the defeat of the Carthaginians at Panormos, Palermo, in 250, when L. Caecilius Metellus captured a large number of the dreaded war elephants. The protagonists of the later date associate the coinage with one struck by Hannibal's allies in 208 or 207, when relations between Rome and Etruscan allies was strained. Whether we accept the early or the late dating, the Negro is surely the elephant's driver, and points to the firsthand knowledge in the third century of Negro mahouts in the Carthaginian forces. In this connection it should not be forgotten that Black auxiliaries, as I've noted before, served in the Carthaginian army, if we can trust Frontinus, as early as the fifth century BC. Frank Snowden: In view of the probable import of a Plautine reference and of the Negroes on the coinage, the inclusion of Ethiopians and Nubae in the lists of Hannibal's troops as given by Silius Italicus should not be lightly dismissed. At any rate, the Black elephant drivers were apparently not soon forgotten, because a later, next slide please, Pompeiian terra cotta of a tower-bearing elephant with a Negro driver, the detail of whom you can see in the next slide, may have been inspired by the artist's acquaintance with the presence of Negroes among the Carthaginian troops. Frank Snowden: Allusions to Blacks, few in the republican literature, became more numerous beginning with the Augustine period. Increased acquaintance with the Negroid type is also reflected in the art of the empire. The Negro's more frequent appearance is in many ways related to Roman activity in Africa, for like the Greeks the Romans came to know very well the Ethiopians in Egypt and those from the south. From the time of Augustus until late in the empire, the exigencies of frontier defense necessitated military operations and diplomatic relations involving the Romans' Black and dark neighbors to the south of Egypt. Gaius Petronius, prefect of Egypt, was required to engage in two campaigns against the Ethiopians between 24 and 22 BC, and to sponsor diplomatic conferences with the Ethiopians before a final settlement was reached. Frank Snowden: In the next slide, which is in agate, you have a very skillfully carved piece with three Negroid heads back to back, and it's been suggested that this is one of those Ethiopian queens, the Black woman in front, and the other two, one her consort and the other a son. In the course of his campaigns, Petronius captured some generals of the Ethiopian queen, whom he sent to Alexandria, and on one occasion he sent 1000 prisoners to Augustus. A pair of bronzes in the next slide of Negroes with their hands tied behind their backs, this is in East Berlin, has been considered a record of prisoners taken in one of Petronius's campaigns. Frank Snowden: There is little doubt that many terra cotta figures such as those in the next slide of Negro warriors from the Roman period were recollections of the soldiers who opposed the Romans at the time of Augustus. May I have the next slide please? Yeah, there's another one of those. Roman encounters with Ethiopians south of Egypt during the reign of Nero received notice in Roman authors. Records of diplomatic exchanges between Romans and the Ethiopian opponents have been preserved. Perhaps the life size marble bust in Rome in the next slide of a Negro from the Flavian period, wearing a draped cloth over his left shoulder, is one of those Blacks who participated in such diplomatic relations. Frank Snowden: The Negro in Roman art has not been studied as fully as Blacks in the art of Greece. Discussions have often considered the Blacks emanating from Roman studios as uninspired copies of Hellenistic originals. Furthers, scholars have frequently overlooked the extent to which Negroes in Roman art may be related to the reality of the Roman world. I don't think Roman artists were as dull as so many people have made them out to be. At Campania, as the provenance for example of a number of Blacks dating to the first and second centuries AD may be related to the presence of Blacks in Campania attested by the literature. Blacks maybe have begun to appear in Campania under Augustus, as a result of his Ethiopian campaigns which I've already cited. Frank Snowden: At Pozzuoli, north of Naples, ancient Puteoli, according to Dio Cassius when Nero was entertaining Tiridates, his distinguished visitor from Armenia, on one day no one but Ethiopians, men, women, and children appeared in the theater. I don't know whether that was the first segregated theater or what, but there were a lot of Negroes around. Nero's Ethiopian ventures had been mentioned previously. Petronius, who knew Campania well, introduces at Trimalchio's banquet two long-haired Ethiopians, who he says were just like the men who scatter sand in the amphitheater. Petronius by mention of Ethiopians in the amphitheater seems to be referring to a not uncommon sight. Frank Snowden: Archeological finds from Campania complement and confirm the written records in a most striking manner. Among the participants, next slide please, in Isiac ceremonials painted on a pair of frescoes from Herculaneum are several dark skinned figures, some Negroid. G. Picard, in his recent book on Roman painting, is fully convinced that the artist of this in the next slide had seen something like this. May I go back to the other one for just one moment? You can see there that the artist alternates these Black and white figures, and then the Black figures, like the central one on the stairs there. He was aesthetically interested in that. You've got this long white robe, and then above that the ebony shoulders and so forth, and it made a good scene. Frank Snowden: The next one again, you'll see in the next slide, the central figure there is Negroid. I've examined these, and they're in the Naples Museum, under different lights. I wish I had time to tell you some of the fantastic explanations that I've read of what that central figure is. But there's no question. By the way, there's a lot of paint on him, and I think this with many of these Ethiopians, the sources tell us, used paint as a sort of a tattoo, and that's what that is. Frank Snowden: Other objects found at Herculaneum portraying Negroes include a marble relief of a charioteer in the next slide, leading eagerly forward as he holds the reins in his hand. By the way, the Negro's hair never ceased to interest these people, and notice the way this man has done his hair there. In the next slide, you have a Negro whose life size statue of white marble was found near Naples. He was perhaps a singer or actor of the second century AD. Perhaps his reputation equaled that of Glycon, a tragic actor in the time of Nero, a tall dark man with a hanging lower lip, who we're told in one of our sources was manumitted by Nero when he paid one of his owners 300,000 sesterces for his share in the actor. Frank Snowden: The Negro in the art of north Africa has not received the attention the subject deserves. Although the Black or dark skinned Terence had come to Rome in the days of the Republic, it's often forgotten that Blacks from north Africa as well as from Egypt found their way to various parts of the Roman world. As a result of their considerable activity in north Africa, the Romans developed an intimate acquaintance with Ethiopians living in the cities along or near the north African coast. Next slide. Frank Snowden: A Negro herm, and that of a Libyan, dating from the middle of the second century AD found in the Antonine baths at Carthage, have been interpreted as representing prisoners captured by Romans north of the Sahara. Here is another view, the details of the Black. Among the troops of Septimius Severus in Britain, you remember he came from north Africa, the Historia Augusta notes the presence of an Ethiopian soldier. A unit of Moors, a "numeri Maurorum," was stationed at a third century garrison at Aballava, Burgh by Sands, up in Britain, where perhaps the Black soldier served. The emperor therefore may very well have drawn upon other Africans for some of his auxiliaries. Frank Snowden: Not without significance for this subject are the seemingly Negroid soldiers, particularly one in the next slide, the one here with the conical, the first one on our right with the conical cap. His broad nose and his thick lips look pretty suspicious to me, and some anthropologists have agreed. This is on the Arch of Septimius Severus in the Roman Forum. Frank Snowden: A poem in the Latin anthology sings the praises of a Black huntsman, Olympius, whom the people of Carthage assured undying fame because they admired his courage and speed. Olympius was not the only Black athlete known to the inhabitants of north Africa. Of the considerable evidence provided by art is a third century mosaic in the next slide from El Djem, south of Carthage, which includes a Negro, one of five huntsmen celebrating perhaps on the eve of their appearance in the amphitheater. The second from the left is clearly Negroid, and here they are looking at the beasts, they're drinking, and wondering who will survive the next day, they or those beasts below. Frank Snowden: The neglect of the Negro in the art of north Africa is curious, because the presence of Negroes and mixed Black-white types in ancient north Africa is not only attested by classical authors, but is generally accepted by modern north African specialists. Further, the use of descriptive names such as Leucaethiopes, white Ethiopians, and Melanogaetuli, Black Gaetuli, has been interpreted as indicating that the ancients were well aware of race mixture between Negroes and Libyans, Negroes and Berbers. Frank Snowden: In a discussion of Carthaginian art, P. Santos states that there is no reason for astonishment to find frequent portrayals of Negroes by Carthaginian artists. In light of the evidence pointing to Carthaginian absorption of Negroid peoples. Similarly, in view of the evidence for the Roman period, both Negro and Black-white types should be expected in the art of Roman north Africa, yet they've often gone unnoticed. Examples from Roman north African art of individuals possessing one or more of the traits employed by anthropologists in classifying Negro-white types follow, the first slide. Frank Snowden: A winged figure serving as one of the capitals in the House of the Historiated Capitals at Utica, first century BC or first century AD. A. Lézine describes the figure as Eros, and calls attention to the hair and nose, broad at the base, but in addition we note the lips are also rather thick. The next slide, a mosaic from a Villa of the Nile near Leptis Magna near Tripoli, late second century or early third century, showing a galloping horseman, cited as an example of crossings between Libyans and Negroes by S. Sergi, who comments on the broadness of nose, woolenness of hair, and color darker than that of others in the mosaic. Next slide. Frank Snowden: A limestone head found at Dougga, southwest of Carthage. Beginning of the third century. Rather thick lips, broad nose, frizzly hair, and bear. In the next slide, we have a terra cotta of perhaps a gladiator from Carthage, also early third century, markedly similar to the limestone head just shown with respect to type of nose and lips. In the next, you have a mosaic, third century AD from Carthage, this is in the Louvre I believe. Servants in preparation for a banquet. The large figure in the center may have resembled those who Petronius described as long haired Ethiopians at Trimalchio's banquet. Frank Snowden: In the next slide, third century AD from Thyna, south of Sfax, you have a memorial commissioned by an obviously well to do inhabitant of the area, in the form of a scene depicting a man and a woman participating in their funeral banquet. Like Trimalchio, they were proud of their progress. That the man in the upper panel is obviously Negroid, of Black-white extraction, his name is Gaius Julius Serenus, and the woman, white, [Numatoria Saturnina] recline on separate couches. They're raising golden goblets, but he was proud not only of his material success but that he was connubially happy. He's got all those cupids running around there. Frank Snowden: In the next mosaic, third century, also from Thyna. This wrestling scene in the lower panel, the skin of that subdued wrestler is clearly darker than that of all the rest, and I've examined that, and he to me also looks like he's of Black-white extraction. In the next one, from Gargaresh near Tripoli, fourth century AD, a candle bearer protecting a tomb of Aelia Arisuth, cited by R. Bartoccini in his discussion of mixture between Libyans and Negroes, and he comments on the wooly hair, the platyrrhynism, and the brownish skin. Frank Snowden: F. Cumont indicated his awareness of the existence of Black-white racial mixture in north Africa in his interpretation of a first century AD marble head in the next slide. Cumont argued that the head, which he regarded as that of a young mulatto or quadroon on the basis of the rather broad nostrils and thick lips, probably belonged to a statuette, a personification of Libya, worshiped in a domestic chapel, perhaps at Ostia, by a merchant from Cyrene. Frank Snowden: In view of textual and archeological evidence, and of anthropological research pointing to Black-white racial crossings in north Africa, it is reasonable that like Cumont, we should be more aware of north Africa in the interpretation of certain foreign types in the empire. We should recognize that north Africa, as well as Egypt, may have been the ancestral home of many mixed Black-white types who served as models in Roman studios. The interest of the north African artists in Black-white types is what would be expected, in view of a sociological phenomenon noted by Greek artists as early as the middle of the fifth century, and we noticed in the fourth century, by Aristotle. Frank Snowden: Such racial mixture as caught the attention of north African artists did not escape the notice of writers or other artists in the Roman period. The scientific curiosity of Aristotle in the transmission of racial characteristics in Black-white crosses was cheered by Pliny the Elder and Plutarch. Mulattoes were frequent enough in the empire for Satyrus to find a source of amusement for the Roman public when the birth of a child with Negroid mixture pointed to adultery. The appearance of unexpected mulatto children was apparently common enough to give rise to a theory of maternal impression, mentioned by Quintilian and Heliodorus. Frank Snowden: The mixed types who served as models for the following pieces from the early centuries of the empire enable us to examine additional examples of racial mixture, and to study various gradation of Negroid admixture. The first seven are all in marble. The first one, an Isiac, a priest from Athens now in Copenhagen, from the last years of the first century. In most cases, some anthropologist or classical scholar has said this, and I agree, and that's why I include it. Frank Snowden: The next one, a mulatto woman, first century AD, from lower Egypt, interpreted as a personification of Africa. The next one, a little girl from Corinth, from the Flavian or Trajanic period, in the Boston Museum. The next one, discovered by Homer Thompson in the Agora from the Trajanic period. The next, a youth of about 100 AD in the Vatican. As far as I know, this has never been published. The next is Memnon, the pupil of Herodes Atticus, whom I mentioned a moment ago. Frank Snowden: As an illustration in the lack of color consciousness among the Greeks and Romans, the only reason that we know that he is Negroid is this. Although there's several mentions to Memnon in the various accounts of Herodes Atticus, nothing says anything about his Ethiopian ancestry. It happens that in one of the estates of Herodes Atticus, this head was found, and I don't know, four or five years ago another arm was found, so the two put together indicate that. But like many north Africans today, they're not conscious to the extent of color. They're not color blind, nobody is, but they're not color conscious to the extent of some peoples in certain Western societies. The next one, please. Frank Snowden: A youth from Asia Minor. This is in East Berlin, second century AD. The next one, a bronze bust of a child in the Bibliotheque Nationale, the one on the right, and the woman in the middle, and finally I have a bronze statuette of a boy from Avignon in one of the provincial museums in France. In my discussion of the Roman period, I have emphasized mixed Black-white types because they have not in the past received adequate treatment. Further, I wish to emphasize that the careful application of anthropological criteria and a judicious use of classical art may throw new light on foreign types in the ancient world, and may provide some useful guidelines for the reinterpretation of much well known material, as well as for the study of new finds. Frank Snowden: Nothing in the total artistic picture points in a direction other than that indicated by the literary evidence. The Greeks and Romans attached no special stigma to color, and developed no special theory about the inferiority of darker peoples as darker peoples. The Greco-Roman racial outlook differed substantially from that of many later Western societies, which have attached great importance to the color of the skin. Thought a man came from far away Scythia, south Russia, or distant Ethiopia in the south, though a man was as physically different from the Greek or the Roman as the Blackest Ethiopian or the blondest Scythian. Such distinctions were trifles to those Greeks and Romans who commented on the diversity of mankind. Frank Snowden: It's intrinsic merit, says Menander, that counts. Similarly, the early Church embraced both Scythian and Ethiopian. It was the Ethiopian, the Blackest and remotest of men, who was selected as an important symbol of early Christianity's mission. By Ethiopians, declared Augustine, all nations were signified. The Greco-Roman artistic picture we have seen is consistent with the brief statement which I have just given of certain views expressed in classical early Christian literature. The Negro appealed to generations of classical artists for much the same reason as other peoples, and the frequency with which the Negro was portrayed, especially when considered in the light of the testimony of classical literature, justifies a reassessment of the size of the Negro element in the population of the ancient world. Frank Snowden: Finally, what about the attitude of the artists themselves toward the Negroes who served as their models? Although there are those scholars who have allowed the classical works to speak for themselves, artistic criticism has produced comments such as the following. The ugliness of the Negro seems to have appealed alike to sculpture, engraver, and painter. The use of the Negro and crocodile groups reveals a keen sense of the comic interest of the Ethiopians. Nothing more comic in art than Laocoon and the serpents, you know. Frank Snowden: Memnon is represented as white because of a Greek aversion to Negroid features. The Negroes on that Panagyurishte phiale, you know, dedicated to the gods, are almost caricatures, and reveal little of the Homeric spirit, which represents Ethiopians living at the ends of the Earth in an exalted spirit as friends of the gods, and the Negro Spinario is an outright instance of the comic. An examination of the ancient record, I think, does not provide a basis to justify those opinions I've just cited. One review of my Blacks in Antiquity states, "The signs of bigotry which we find in studying the history of classical antiquity are almost always among the the modern scholars, not among their ancient subjects." Frank Snowden: Aesthetic considerations often provided an overriding motivation for the selection of the Negro, and J. D. Beasley, that great student of ancient vases ... J. D. Beasley's aesthetic emphasis deserves in my judgment a wider application than to the Greek vases which he had in mind when he wrote, and I quote, and he's rejecting a lot of nonsensical interpretations of Negroes in Greek vases which he had inherited, "The Black man gets in not because he has strong prophylactic powers, nor because he is more addicted to wine or perfume than the white man, or because they were both perfumes and Black men in Egypt, but because it seemed a crime not to make Negroes when you had that magnificent Black glaze." Frank Snowden: As I've indicated in this lecture, there are other scholars who would agree with an extension of Beasley's views, and who would concur in my opinion that the Negro appealed to generations of classical artists for much the same reason as other models. The varied treatment which the Negro received over many centuries, in a wide range of media and art forms, suggests that the craftsmen were not motivated by a stereotyped concept of the Negro. The approach of the artists, in their renderings of the Negro, was apparently in the spirit of the classical authors whose comments on the Ethiopian, whether at home or abroad, attached no great importance to the color of a man's skin. Frank Snowden: Thank you.