The Negro in Greek and Roman Civilization A Study Of the Ethiopian Type
Date
1929
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
The John Hopkins Press
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
Description
Heritage
Keywords
Negro, Greek, Roman, Civilization