The Negro in Greek and Roman Civilization A Study Of the Ethiopian Type

Abstract

No barbarian race held as continuous an interest for the Greek and Roman artist as the Ethiopian. Realistic portraits of other known races in the classical world are relatively few and belong usually to the Hellenistics and Roman eras. The negro, on the other hand, was rendered with the utmost fidelity to the racial type during the most restrained and idealistic period of Greek art. Attic vase painters who were content to indicate Orientals by their dress with scarcely any distinguishing marks of race, delineated with marked realism the woolly hair and thick lips of the Ethiopian. From its earliest appearance the popularity of the type never waned in any productive period of classical art. Due to the humble position of the Ethiopian in Greece and the fact that realism was usually confined to smaller objects the great sculptors did not consider him a sufficiently dignified or important subject, since life-sized heads and statues are comparatively few. But for smaller objects the popularity of the type was tremendous, and is attested by a wealth of statuettes, vases, engraved gems, coins, lamps, weights, fingerrings, ear-rings, necklaces and masks from classical sites. Literary evidence as to the status of the black race in Greek and Roman life is very slight and to supplement our knowledge one must turn to the art objects which show the type. Interest was drawn to this problem at the time when the excitement over the abolition of negro slavery was raging in the United States prior to the Civil War. The earliest important work on the subject was a monograph entitled Die Aethiopen der altclassischen Kunst, by J. Loewenherz, published in an important year in negro history, 1861. This monograph does not fulfil the promise of its title, for the examples in art are subordinated to a study of the Memnon myth and a discussion of the real and mythical Ethiopian

lands. In 1885 Von Schneider published an article 1 in which he classified chronologically the examples which he knew, and which he later supplemented by a list of examples brought to his attention in the interval.' The most important contribution to the subject has recently been made by Buschor in an article entitled Das Krokodil des Sotades,' which gives a very full account of the negro on vases of the fifth century. Other work on the question has been confined to the publication of individual specimens which have come into museum or private collections. Sometimes this has been made the basis of a substantial article as in the case of Schrader' who compares at great length a head of a Libyan in the British Museum with a head of a negro in Berlin and who assembles some examples of Ethiopians relevant to his discussion. But in the main such articles have done no more than list a few unrelated examples of the type and make some inaccurate generalizations. This is probably due to the fact that only a few of the ancient negro portraits are well known, since only a few have been widely reproduced by illustration. The need for a new and more complete list has been frequently expressed. Wace expressed the hope that this would form a part of Bienkowski's Corpus Barbarorum." Von Schneider, who had great interest in the subject, announced his intention of supplementing his list by a more complete study but died without realizing this aim. At the suggestion of Professor David M. Robinson this study was undertaken. Representations of the negro type have proved to be so common that a complete list is an impossibility, as practically every museum or private collection contains one or more examples. This forces us to depend on catalogues, and as many negro types occur on minor objects