Sepitmus Severus was one of the better Emperors of Rome. He was from N Africa and I believe the first Emperor to not be of Italian origin (Trajen and Hadrian were born of Italians in Spain).
The British museum seems to suggest he of black or sub saharan heritage.
Whats the straight dope?
I just misread the thread title and thought this was about Severus Snape.:o Carry on…
Your own cite says, “Although his family was of Phoenician rather than black African descent. . . .” It sounds as if his geographical African-ness, which is undeniable, meant that some other tropes of African-ness, such as dark skin, got applied to him.
I’m no expert, just going from what you provided.
:smack::smack:
I read it three times before posting and I missed it.
Though it does raise the question, if he was Phonecian, how dark could he have been? Surely not dark enough to raise comment?
Well, the genetic makeup of both Phoenicia and Carthage has changed, of course, but think closer to modern Lebanese or Algerian than to black. To someone from Italy, he would have looked “not from around here” but it wouldn’t have been so much a matter of skin tone as other facial and body features.
The cite from the British Museum also notes that his statue was created around Severus’ lifetime, so it seems likely to be an accurate representation of what he looked like. Looks like he had tightly curled hair, which probably made him stick out as different looking to native Italians beyond the skin tone which is called out in the text.
Last year National Geographic did a feature story about the Phoenicians, and they included a photo collage of modern Mediterranean people to provide a general impression of what the Phoenicians are believed to have looked like. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like they put that online anywhere.
I wouldn’t read too much into the tightly-coiled hair though, it may just have been the coiffure he preferred. He was the Emperor after all. Statues of Hadrian also feature a curled hair-do.
His father was Punic or Libyan, his mother was Italian.
Tightly-curled hair is common in Northern Africa and in Southern Spain; actually, when worn long and unbraided it looks a lot like Hermione Granger’s except for being more commonly black or dark brown than light brown like hers. I’m reasonably sure that Hermione isn’t supposed to be black.
Well it has not stopped one website from claiming him as black.
Well, you can find websites claiming all sorts of things. But Herodian of Antioch says he was “a Libyan”, and the Historia Augusta (so far as that’s a reliable source about anything) describes his heritage as:
What about Charles II of England, named “the Black Boy,” AKA “the Swarthy Stuart?” You don’t hear people talking about him, do you, huh?!
Oh, if only Egmond Codfried were still around for this . . .
You’re not alone. I saw Sirius Black.
Seems to be an inordinate amount of Harry Potter going on in here.
I was actually expecting this to be someone that stumbled on one of that guy’s sites until I saw the OP’s name. So thanks for the laugh.
“A BLACK Potions Master?”
“It worked in Blazing Saddles..”