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