Famous Classical Authors Who Were Probably Not What We Would Consider “White”

Classical studies has long been perceived as the study of “dead white men.” This is a reputation that has certainly greatly injured classical studies as a discipline in recent years. I remember reading a rather disturbing answer on Quora a while ago written by a history professor in which he argued that, since we are now living in a modern, racially diverse world and classical studies is nothing more than the study of dead white people, universities should stop teaching the classics and, instead of hiring classics professors, only hire professors to teach subjects dealing with non-white history, like East Asian history or Latin American history.

One thing that many people do not realize, however, is that the ancient Mediterranean world was actually much more racially diverse than it is often portrayed. In fact, a very large number of the most revered classical authors were probably not what we would call “white.” Many of them came from lands all across the Middle East and North Africa, including the lands that are now the countries of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria.

An inherently anachronistic question

It is difficult to answer questions dealing with race in antiquity because, quite simply, the ancient Greeks and Romans did not think of race at all in the same way we do today. The concepts of a “white race” and a “black race” are modern social constructs based on the arbitrary physical feature that is skin color that were invented in the Early Modern Period primarily to justify the enslavement of people of African descent by people of European descent. These concepts did not exist in antiquity and would be totally foreign to the ancient Greeks and Romans.

The ancient Greeks and Romans certainly had a concept of “nationality”; they routinely thought of people as “Greek,” “Roman,” “Egyptian,” “Persian,” “Skythian,” “Thrakian,” “Celtic,” “Germanic,” and so forth. Nonetheless, they had no concept of “race” as we think of it today. The closest equivalents to our modern word “race” in Ancient Greek were ἔθνος (éthnos) and γένος (génos), both of which really mean something more like “nation” or “clan.”

If you walked up to a person in the Athenian agora in the fifth century BC and asked them in Greek, “Are you white?” they would probably have about as much of a notion what you were talking about as if you asked them, “Are you olive?” Quite simply, the notions of “white” and “black” as racial identities did not exist back then.

ABOVE: Illustration from c. 1854 depicting white slave traders inspecting a black slave in preparation for the slave to be sold. The concepts of a “white race” and a “black race” were created in modern times primarily in order to justify the enslavement of people of African descent. Such concepts did not exist in antiquity.

The ancient Greeks and Romans, of course, were fully aware that people from different parts of the world tended to look different from each other and they were aware that people from sub-Saharan Africa had dark skin. Nonetheless, they did not think of these differences in racial terms. To a person from ancient times, the color of a person’s skin was just another physical characteristic, no different from the color of a person’s hair or the color of a person’s eyes.

A person with dark skin was just a person who happened to have dark skin and, most of the time, the color of a person’s skin was completely ignored. Skin color is barely even mentioned at all in our surviving Greek and Roman sources, even though we know the peoples of the Mediterranean world were just as diverse in terms of their skin tones as they are today.

It is largely a result of the fact that skin color is virtually never mentioned in classical sources that people today are so accustomed to assuming that everyone in the ancient Greco-Roman world was what we today would call “white,” since we today have an unfortunate tendency to think of white skin as the “default skin color.”

I have already written articles investigating claims that the ancient Egyptian philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria and the Roman emperor Septimius Severus were what we today would call “black.” In both cases, I concluded that they were probably not what we today would describe as “black,” but they were probably not what we would describe as “white” either.

In this article, I intend to discuss a number of classical Greek and Roman authors who were probably not what we today would consider “white.” Most of these authors I am about to discuss were probably not what we would consider “black” either, although a few of them probably were. My goal in writing this article is to dispel the notion that all classical authors were what we would call “white” and to show that the ancient Mediterranean world was actually very diverse.

ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons showing the world as described by the Greek historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos (lived c. 484 – c. 425 BC) in his Histories. The Greeks and Romans were aware of the existence of sub-Saharan Africans, but did not think of them as belonging to a separate “race” in the modern sense from themselves.

Zenon of Kition

Zenon of Kition (lived c. 334 – c. 262 BC) was the founder of the Hellenistic philosophical school of Stoicism. He is widely regarded as one of the most important philosophers of the ancient Greek world. Zenon wrote a large number of treatises, but only fragments of them have survived, most of them preserved through quotation by later writers.

Zenon was born in the city of Kition on the island of Kypros in the eastern Mediterranean. His ancestors were Phoenicians from what is now Lebanon. Based on this fact alone, which is quite well-established as I understand it, we might impute that Zenon was probably fairly dark-skinned. Incidentally, in this rare instance, we have at least one source that seems to back this assumption up.

In his biography of Zenon in his book The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, the third century AD Greek biographer Diogenes Laërtios explicitly describes Zenon as having been dark-skinned. Diogenes Laërtios is known for being unreliable, but he does cite two earlier sources, the Stoic philosopher Chrysippos of Soloi (lived c. 279 – c. 206 BC), who was a student of Kleanthes, who was a student of Zenon himself, as well as the first-century BC Stoic philosopher Apollonios of Tyre, in support of his description of Zenon as a dark-skinned man of Phoenician ancestry. Here is what Diogenes Laërtios says about Zenon’s appearance, as translated by R. D. Hicks:

“Zeno, the son of Mnaseas (or Demeas), was a native of Citium in Cyprus, a Greek city which had received Phoenician settlers. He had a wry neck, says Timotheus of Athens in his book On Lives. Moreover, Apollonius of Tyre says he was lean, fairly tall, and swarthy–hence some one called him an Egyptian vine-branch, according to Chrysippus in the first book of his Proverbs. He had thick legs ; he was flabby and delicate.”

There is at least one surviving bust that is believed to have been intended to represent Zenon of Kition. It is a marble bust from the Farnese Collection in Naples. It is difficult to assess how accurate a representation it is, since we do not know if it is based on a bust that was made during Zenon’s lifetime. The portrayal of Zenon in the bust, however, does seem to be compatible with Diogenes Laërtios’s description of his appearance.

In any case, I strongly suspect that, if Zenon of Kition were alive today, most people probably would not consider him “white.” Mind you, of course, this should not be taken to mean Zenon was necessarily what we would call “black” either. Most people from Lebanon are not what we would normally call “black,” so it is likely that Zenon was somewhere closer to “brown” than “black.”

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the bust of Zenon of Kition from the Farnese Collection

Publius Terentius Afer

Publius Terentius Afer (lived c. 185 – c. 159? BC), most commonly known in English as “Terence,” is widely recognized one of the greatest Roman comic playwrights. Indeed, along with his fellow comic playwright Plautus, Terence is revered as one of the most prominent figures in the founding of the entire genre of Latin literature.

Terence’s cognomen Afer indicates that he was a member of the Afri, a Berber tribe that lived in the region of what is now Tunisia around the city of Carthage. He was probably born in or near the city of Carthage sometime around 185 BC or thereabouts. When he was very young, he was captured, taken to Italy as a slave, and sold to the Roman Senator Publius Terentius Lucanus, who educated him and taught him how to read and write. Upon observing Terence’s outstanding literary gifts, Lucanus set him free. Terence adopted his former master’s name as a gesture of gratitude.

To be very clear, Terence was not captured and sold into slavery because he was African; slavery in ancient times was a brutal institution, but it was not based on race. Anyone could be captured and sold into slavery, not matter where they came from or what they looked like and Africans were no more likely to be captured and sold into slavery than anyone else. Terence was most likely captured and sold into slavery because he came from the region near Carthage and, at the time when he was alive, the Romans were hostile to the Carthaginians.

In any case, Terence went on to become a successful playwright. Seven plays by Terence have survived to the present day complete: The Girl from Andros (written c. 166 BC), The Mother-in-Law (written c. 165 BC), The Self-Tormentor (written c. 163 BC), Phormio (written c. 161 BC), The Eunuch (written c. 161 BC), and The Brothers (written c. 160 BC). In around 159 BC or thereabouts, when he was about twenty-five years of age, Terence went on a voyage to Greece. He mysteriously disappeared and never returned. To this day, no one knows what happened to him. He may have lived out the rest of his life in Greece or he may have been killed at sea.

As is the case with nearly all the most famous classical authors, no reliable depictions of Terence’s physical appearance have survived from antiquity. Nonetheless, we can perhaps guess at what he might have looked like based on where he came from. As a Berber from what is now Tunisia, Terence was probably not what we today would consider “black,” but he was probably not what we would consider “white” either. Like many Berbers, his skin was probably more of a brownish color.

ABOVE: Fictional illustration from a ninth-century AD illustrated manuscript of Terence’s plays, depicting him as a dark-skinned North African. This illustration is probably based on an earlier third-century AD original. Even so, it still dates from hundreds of years after Terence’s death.

Philon of Alexandria

Philon of Alexandria (lived c. 20 BC – c. 50 AD) was Jewish Middle Platonist philosopher who lived in the city of Alexandria in northern Egypt during the early years of the Roman Empire. Philon interpreted Judaism through the lens of Platonic philosophy and interpreted many parts of the Jewish scriptures as allegorical.

Philon is actually credited with having helped pioneer the idea of allegorical interpretation of scripture, which later became extremely influential on the Alexandrian school of early Christian theology. Notable early Christian theologians influenced by the idea of allegorical interpretation of scripture include Klemens of Alexandria and Origenes of Alexandria.

Philon’s most famous works are his Questions, his Allegorical Commentaries, and his Exposition of the Law, all three of which deal with the interpretation of the Torah. Philon also wrote an account titled The Embassy to Gaius, about how he was selected by the Jews of Alexandria as an embassy to the Roman emperor Gaius Caligula. In the work, Philon describes his meeting with Caligula, characterizing Caligula as extremely proud and arrogant and altogether unpleasant.

As an ethnic Jew living in Alexandria, Philon was probably at least somewhat dark-skinned. Although many ethnic Jews today are what we usually consider “white,” these are European Jews, whose ancestors lived in Europe for thousands of years and doubtlessly intermarried with the native populations of the areas where they were living at various points. The original Jews in ancient times came from the Levant and would have been predominately Middle Eastern in appearance, just as Jews whose ancestors lived in the Middle East are today.

ABOVE: Fictional illustration from c. 1584 intended to represent Philon of Alexandria. No one knows what Philon really looked like.

Paul the Apostle

This one may strike a bit of controversy. As most people already know, Paul of Tarsos (lived c. 5 – c. 64 or 67 AD) was an early Christian writer, preacher, and missionary. More than any other individual, Paul is responsible for shaping Christian theology as we know it today. Thirteen of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament are traditionally attributed to him.

Of the epistles traditionally attributed to the apostle Paul, seven are universally agreed to have been written by him (i.e. Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Romans, Philippians, and Philemon). Meanwhile, one epistle is of disputed authorship (i.e. Colossians), five are generally thought to be forgeries written in Paul’s name by someone else at a later date (i.e. Titus, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Ephesians, and 2 Thessalonians), and one never actually claims to have been written by him and bears little stylistic resemblance to his known authentic epistles (i.e. Hebrews).

Paul is traditionally assumed to have been what we today would consider “white,” but there is no good reason to assume this, since we have no reliable depictions of Paul that have survived from antiquity and Paul himself says little about his own appearance. We do know, however, that Paul was a Jew from the city of Tarsos in what is now southeastern Turkey. Given his background, I would say it is more likely that Paul was not what we would call “white” than it is that he was. He probably was not what we would call “black,” but he probably wasn’t “white” either.

ABOVE: Fictional painting by the French Tenebrist painter Valentin de Boulogne depicting the apostle writing his epistles. De Boulogne portrays Paul as a white man, but what reason do we have to assume that he was?

Titus Flavius Josephus

Titus Flavius Josephus (lived c. 37 – c. 100 AD), most commonly known simply as “Josephus,” was a Jewish historian who is our most important source of information about the history and culture of Judaea in the first century AD.

Josephus was born in Jerusalem sometime around 37 BC to Jewish parents. His father claimed to be of priestly descent and his mother claimed to be descended from the ancient kings of Judaea. Josephus served as the commander of the Jewish rebel forces in Galilee during the First Jewish-Roman War, which began in 64 AD. After Josephus’s forces were defeated in the Siege of Yodfat in 67 AD, Josephus surrendered himself to the Roman general Vespasian. In the ultimate act of sycophantry, Josephus declared that Vespasian was the Messiah promised by the Jewish scriptures and predicted that he would become emperor of the Roman Empire.

Josephus got lucky, because Vespasian did eventually become emperor. After taking the throne in 69 AD, Vespasian kept Josephus as a court historian. In around 75 AD, Josephus completed a monumental history of the Jewish-Roman War in which he had taken part, titled The Jewish War. In around 94 AD, Josephus completed an even more massive work: a history of the Jewish people titled Antiquities of the Jews.

No reliable depictions of Josephus have survived from antiquity and we have no detailed description of his appearance that has survived, but, since he was from Judaea, it is likely that he was Middle-Eastern in appearance and he probably had darker skin than what we would normally consider “white.”

ABOVE: Fictional eighteenth or nineteenth-century engraving intended to represent the Jewish historian Titus Flavius Josephus. This is a fictional representation; no one knows what Josephus really looked like, but he probably was not “white.”

Loukianos of Samosata

Loukianos of Samosata (lived c. 125 – after c. 180 AD) was a Syrian satirist who wrote exclusively in the Greek language and who was known for his witty, tongue-in-cheek style and his skeptical treatment of contemporary religious and superstitious beliefs. An astounding number of surviving works by Loukianos indicate that he was unbelievably popular in antiquity. Over eighty works by Loukianos have survived to the present day, which is a much higher number than for the vast majority of classical authors.

Loukianos came from a lower-middle-class family the village of Samosata, which was located on the banks of the river Euphrates in northwest Syria on the furthest eastern outskirts of the Roman Empire. His native language was not Greek or Latin, but Syriac. As a young man, Loukianos somehow learned the Greek language, acquired himself an extensive education, and eventually made a name for himself as an orator. He probably lived in Athens for a number of years, where he seems to have written most of his surviving works.

Loukianos’s most famous work is his novel A True Story, which is a satire against authors who tell fantastic stories and try to pass them off as true. He begins the novel with a disclaimer in which he admits that the title of the book is a lie and that nothing in the book at all contains even a grain of truth, aside from the introduction. He then proceeds to tell the most outlandish tale in which he journeys out beyond the Pillars of Herakles and discovers all sorts of bizarre lands.

The story gets even more absurd when Loukianos’s ship gets swept up by a tornado and taken to the Moon. There, Loukianos and his companions participate in a war between the inhabitants of the Moon and the inhabitants of the Sun. After spending some time living on the Moon, Loukianos and his companions return to Earth, only to be swallowed by a whale with a body hundreds of miles long. Inside the whale, they wage a war against a nation of fish people before eventually escaping.

Eventually, after more adventures, Loukianos and his companions visit the Underworld, where they meet the heroes from Greek mythology, poets like Homer, and philosophers like Plato. The novel ends with Loukianos promising that the story of his adventures will be continued in an upcoming sequel. No sequel was ever written—because everything in the book is a lie.

Loukianos wrote dozens of other works including The Lover of Lies (a satirical dialogue making fun of superstitious beliefs), Alexandros the False Prophet (a satirical work making fun of the dishonest religious leader Alexandros of Abonoteichos), Dialogues of the Gods (a set of satirical dialogues making fun of the gods), Dialogues of the Dead (a series of satirical dialogues making fun of traditional beliefs about the afterlife), The Passing of Peregrinos (a satirical letter making fun of early Christians), Philosophies for Sale (a satire against contemporary philosophers), and many others.

Loukianos is definitely one of my favorite classical authors. No depictions of Loukianos have survived from antiquity, but we do know that he was a native Syrian, so, in all likelihood, he probably would have had skin of a fairly brownish color, much like most Syrians today. Unfortunately, even though Loukianos was one of the most beloved and canonical classical authors up until around the eighteenth century or thereabouts, he rapidly declined in popularity in around the nineteenth century.

Anti-Syrian prejudice played no small part in Loukianos’s fall from popularity. The renowned German classicist Eduard Norden (lived 1868 – 1941) described Loukianos as an “Oriental without depth or character… who has no soul and degrades the most soulful language.”

ABOVE: Fictional seventeenth-century illustration by the English engraver William Faithorne depicting Loukianos of Samosata as what was then perceived as a stereotypical “Syrian” appearance. No one knows what Loukianos really looked like.

Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis

Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis (lived c. 124 – c. 170 AD), most often known simply as “Apuleius,” was a writer and novelist from North Africa who wrote in Latin and who lived during the height of the Roman Empire. Apuleius was born sometime around 124 BC or thereabouts in the city of Madauros, which is located in what is now the most northeastern part of Algeria. At the time when Apuleius was alive, Madauros was part of the Roman province of Numidia. Like Terence, Apuleius is known to have been of Berber descent, but he grew up very much a part of Greco-Roman culture.

Apuleius’s most famous work is his novel The Golden Ass, which is the only ancient novel written in Latin that has survived to the present day complete. It is also, quite possibly, the most famous surviving ancient novel period. The Golden Ass is based on an earlier fantasy work written in Greek that has been traditionally attributed to Loukianos of Samosata, but which is now believed either to have been written by someone else entirely or to be a summary of a now-lost work by Loukianos.

In any case, it tells the story of a Greek man named Lucius who is accidentally transformed into a donkey by a sorceress. The novel follows Lucius’s various misadventures across the Roman world in the form of a donkey. The first part of the novel is extremely bawdy and full of all sorts of crude jokes. The novel finally concludes with Lucius finding redemption and being transformed back into a man by joining the cult of the Egyptian goddess Isis. The Golden Ass is also notable for its inclusion of a lengthy retelling of the ancient fairy tale of “Cupid and Psyche.”

There are also a number of other works by Apuleius that have survived to the present day. He seems to have been a very popular author in antiquity because he is extensively referenced by later writers. Even though there are no depictions of Apuleius that have survived from antiquity, we can guess that he was most likely brown-skinned because he came from northern Algeria.

ABOVE: Fictional nineteenth-century lithograph intended to represent the Roman novelist Apuleius, who came from what is now northern Algeria. This is a fictional representation; no one really knows what Apuleius looked like.

Tertullianus of Carthage

Tertullianus (lived c. 155 – c. 240 AD) was an early Christian apologist who wrote mainly in Latin. He was born in the ancient city of Carthage, which was located near the modern-day city of Tunis on the northern coast of Tunisia. Like Terence and Apuleius, he was of Berber ancestry.

Tertullianus’s most famous surviving work is the Apologeticus, in which he refutes pervasive misconceptions that were in circulation among non-Christians about what Christians believed and argues for fair treatment of Christians. Tertullianus also wrote other works condemning various Christian sects that he regarded as heretical. He is known for his extremely harsh criticisms of such sects and, really, of anyone who disagreed with him in general.

Terullianus had extensive knowledge of Greco-Roman literature and philosophy and was trained in classical oratory, but had a generally negative view of such subjects. He famously asks the question in chapter seven of his treatise De praescriptione haereticorum, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” meaning “What does Greek philosophy have to do with Christian theology?”

ABOVE: Early Modern fictional illustration intended to represent the early Christian apologist Tertullianus, who came from Carthage in modern-day Tunisia. No one knows what Tertullianus really looked like, but he probably was not what we would call “white.”

Origenes of Alexandria

Origenes of Alexandria (lived c. 184 – c. 253 AD) was an early Christian theologian, apologist, and scholar who was born in the city of Alexandria in northern Egypt. Although Alexandria had a very large Greek population, Origenes seems to have been of native Egyptian descent. His name Ὠριγένης (Ōrigénēs), meaning “born of Horus,” is distinctly Egyptian. Furthermore, there is evidence that Origenes’s mother was a lower-class Egyptian who was not a Roman citizen and that, on account of his mother’s lack of citizenship, Origenes himself was not a citizen.

Origenes eventually went on to become one of the most influential writers on early Christian theology. He wrote exclusively in Greek. His most famous works include On First Principles (a four-volume treatise on Christian theology), Contra Celsum (an apologetic treatise written in response to the anti-Christian tract The True Word, written by the pagan controversialist Kelsos), his Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, originally in twenty-five volumes), and his Commentary on the Song of Songs (a commentary on the Song of Songs, in which he offered an allegorical interpretation of poem as being about the relationship between Christ and the soul of the believer), and his Exhortation to Martyrdom (a work arguing for the glory of martyrdom).

Origenes, however, was an extraordinarily prolific author and the works I have lsited are far from the only works he wrote over the course of his lifetime. Many works by Origenes have not survived and many more works have survived only in part or in translation. This is largely due to the fact that Origenes was condemned as a heretic several centuries after his death, mainly on account of various later followers who claimed that he held various ideas deemed heretical that he never espouses in any of his known works. Despite his condemnation as a heretic, however, Origenes exerted massive influence on all subsequent Christian theology and is considered today to have been a Church Father.

Obviously, as is almost always the case, we do not have any reliable surviving depictions of Origenes from antiquity and we have virtually no information about his physical appearance, but, if we assume that at least his mother was a native, non-Greek Egyptian, then there is a fairly strong probability that he was not entirely what we would consider “white,” since we know from the Fayum mummy portraits that I discussed in my article on Hypatia that most people in Lower Egypt in Roman times had fairly brown skin.

ABOVE: Fictional illustration by the French artist André Thevet intended to represent Origenes of Alexandria. This is a fictional representation; no one knows what Origenes really looked like.

Zosimos of Panopolis

Zosimos of Panopolis was an Egyptian alchemist and mystic who lived in around the late third and early fourth centuries AD. He came from the town of Panopolis (known in Egyptian as Akhmim), which is located in the southernmost part of Egypt, not far from the Sudanese border. He wrote exclusively in Greek as far as we know, but only a few pieces of his writings have been preserved in the original Greek. Instead, many of his works survive only in Syriac or Arabic translations.

Zosimos was one of the founders of the field of alchemy and, although no depictions of him have survived from antiquity and we know next to nothing about his ancestry, given where he came from, there is a strong likelihood that he was what we would call “black.”

ABOVE: Illustration of various alchemical instruments from a fifteenth-century Byzantine Greek manuscript codex containing some of Zosimos of Panopolis’s writings. Zosmios came from southern Egypt and there is a strong likelihood that he was what we today would call “black.”

Augustine of Hippo

Augustine of Hippo (lived 354 – 430 AD) is one of the most famous Christian church fathers. He wrote prolifically in Latin and a large number of his writings have survived from antiquity. He most famous works are his lengthy apologetic treatise The City of God, his confessional autobiography Confessions, and his theological treatise De doctrina Christiana. He is considered one of the most important authors in Christian theology and is credited with having invented the doctrine of Original Sin.

Augustine was born in the city of Thagaste, which is located on the northern coast of what is Algeria. He was of Berber descent, but his family was heavily Romanized and he grew up speaking only Latin. As an adult, Augustine served as the bishop of the city of Hippo Regius, which is also located in northeastern Algeria.

No reliable depictions of Augustine’s physical appearance have survived from antiquity, but, since we know that he was born in North Africa and that he was of Berber ancestry, we can perhaps guess at what he might have looked like. Like Terence, Apuleius, and Tertullianus, Augustine was probably not what we today would call “black,” but he probably was not what we would call “white” either. If he were alive today, we would probably describe his skin color as “brown.”

ABOVE: Sixth-century AD Roman fresco probably intended to represent Augustine of Hippo. This is probably the earliest surviving depiction of Augustine and it is from at least a century after his death.

Hypatia of Alexandria

I am putting Hypatia on this list, even though I already wrote a whole article about her race, because I feel it is important to include a woman on this list. Hypatia was a female Neoplatonist philosopher and mathematician who lived in the city of Alexandria in northern Egypt in the late fourth and early fifth centuries AD.

Hypatia was the daughter of the famous mathematician Theon of Alexandria. She wrote a commentary on Diophantos’s Arithmetika and commentary on Apollonios of Perga’s Conics. She also may have edited the surviving text of Book Three of the Almagest of Klaudios Ptolemaios. She was murdered by a mob of supporters of the bishop Kyrillos of Alexandria in March 415 AD due to her involvement in a political feud between Kyrillos and Orestes, the Roman governor of Egypt, a subject which I discuss in great detail in this article I wrote in August 2018.

The only information we have about Hypatia’s physical appearance comes from the Greek Neoplatonist writer Damaskios of Athens (lived c. 458 – after c. 538 AD), who was born decades after Hypatia’s death and certainly never saw her in person. Damaskios simply says Hypatia was very beautiful and that she often wore a tribon, a kind of cloak often worn by philosophers. This, of course, tells us absolutely nothing about what racial identity we would assign to her if she were alive today.

We do not know what Theon and Hypatia’s ancestry was. Alexandria had a very large Greek population. Theon and Hypatia’s names are both Greek. Furthermore, they both wrote exclusively in Greek. Nonetheless, these things do not necessarily mean that Theon and Hypatia’s ancestors necessarily came from Greece, since they could have been Hellenized Egyptians.

Even if Hypatia had Greek ancestors, though, it is likely that she probably had plenty of Egyptian ancestors as well, since it is likely that at least both she and her father were born in Alexandria. There is a high likelihood that she was not what most people today would consider “white.”

ABOVE: Fictional illustration from 1908 intended to represent Hypatia, representing her as a very English-looking woman. This is a fictional representation; no one really knows what Hypatia actually looked like.

Nonnos of Panopolis

Nonnos of Panopolis was a poet who wrote in Greek in around the fifth century AD. He wrote two lengthy poems that have survived to the present day. The first of these is the Dionysiaka, which is the longest surviving epic poem from classical antiquity. Nonnos’s Dionysiaka spans a whopping forty-eight books (the same number as the Iliad and the Odyssey combined), and is composed of 20,426 total lines of dactylic hexameter. It is a massive, somewhat rambling work which describes in great detail the marvelous adventures of the Greek god Dionysos.

Nonnos’s other famous work is a poetic paraphrase of the Gospel of John, which is considerably shorter than the Dionysiaka. One thing that is fascinating about Nonnos is that textual evidence seems to suggest he wrote the Paraphrase of the Gospel of John before the Dionysiaka, which puts him in a sort of unusual category of an individual who was neither completely a Christian, nor completely a pagan, but rather somewhere in between.

Nonnos came from the city of Panopolis, which is located in southernmost part of Egypt, near the border with Sudan. Although no depictions of Nonnos have survived from antiquity and we know virtually nothing about his ancestry, judging from where he was born, there is a very high probability that, if he were alive today, we would consider him “black.”

Conclusion

Classical Greek and Roman authors were not all what we would consider “white”; in fact, they were actually probably very much what we today would call “racially diverse.” They came from all different parts of the Mediterranean world. Many of them came from the Middle East and North Africa and were probably what we would consider “brown” or “dark-skinned.” A few were probably even what we would consider “black.”

I think I have demonstrated this by my little list here. This is by no means intended to be a complete list; this is only a list of the some of the writers I considered the most prominent or the most famous. If you just read a little more, you can find probably hundreds of classical authors, thinkers, and philosophers who came from outside of Europe but who wrote in Greek or Latin.

Once again, we cannot know for certain what skin color any of these writers had, since, of the people on this list, with the possible exception of Zenon of Kition, we do not know what any of them really looked like. Nevertheless, all of the writers on this list had ancestors from Africa or the Middle East and, more likely than not, they did not have perfectly white skin.