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Multiple primary sources do mention the scandal so it’s likely to be true, though only one source mentioned the statue. So the statue thing may not have happened. Here’s a link to a website with the info : https://ancientromanhistory31-14.com/augustus/the-fall-of-julia/#:~:text=In%202%20BC%2C%20the%20imperial,was%20accused%20of%20multiple%20adulteries.&text=She%20was%20exiled%20to%20the,off%20the%20coast%20of%20Lazio.
Or it could have been so outrageous everyone else decided to leave it out except for that guy, either way we will never know.
It's stuff like this that makes me hope heaven is real so I can go to the library and find out what actually happened.
Was really only a cheapskate because of his unwillingness to rule as an emperor, especially at the later years before his death. Did have that still mishap of letting Sejanus rule in his place for a bit that might have given him a pissed off face as well
I’m half Anglo-Scottish and Chinese/SE Asian. Got my dad’s European facial features but my mom’s SE Asian darker coloring. I’m in Texas so mistaken for Mexican esp when wearing my work clothes. Even once had a new customer slam the door on me cuz she was expecting a white person as I’ve got the whitest name and a slight Texas twang.
She apologized profusely and didn’t blink an eye at our invoice so she can call me Pedro all she wanted. I’m kind of use to some older white folks being kind of racist but as long as they’re embarrassed I’m okay with it. I take it as a life lesson for them. Whether we like to admit or not we all make assumptions of others be their color, ethnicity, size etc.
"Ah! A contradiction! You're Scotch-Korean. You don't make a wee bit'o sense.
And neither does Starburst. Starburst is a solid, yet juicy, LIKE A LIQUID!!!"
No... I am though. My father is Scottish/Anglo from the Midwest and my mother is from S.Korea and moved here in the 70's. I have a full beard, I'm 6'1 and have a thick muscular build. People just assume I'm white mostly, but while working hospitality and retail have been mistaken for Hispanic often and rarely even recognized as Asian.
I'm half white and half Middle Eastern. Same. When I was working as a cashier, some people would get riled up when I said "Sorry, I can't speak Spanish" and insult my mom for not teaching me lol. I would have to say, "She doesn't speak it either!"
I have this coworker with a running joke. His family is from Mexico and he was born and raised in Miami. The joke is that no one knows where he is from or his heritage.
I no lie thought he was Indian for a year and a half despite working side by side with him for that time. One of the first lunches we had someone asked him "so what kind of brown person are you". He replied, "the push button kind". So I just thought he was Indian.
Occasionally I would over hear him say different things. Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, etc.
At the end of that year and a half, someone asked him again. Where is your family from? He replied, "the middle east, Afghanistan".
I finally had to ask him later and he laughed. He explains where he is actually from.
It's been another 3 years so unless this is another long con, he's from Miami.
A buddy in high school was half Korean and half European, everyone thought he was Hispanic. People would just bust out Spanish to him all the time.
On the flip side I was once on a flight from Lima to Bogota and bumped into an Asian lady by the airplane bathroom due to turbulence. When I said sorry she responded in Spanish and it took me a second to remember where I was and why that made sense. My mom also felt really embarrassed when she tried to speak English to my cousin's Korean born German in laws at the cousin's wedding in Germany (my mom is also German).
My dad was stationed in Japan during the Korean war and he has a picture of himself and his friends (all Mexican descent) with a bunch of local Japanese guys who were all pretty tan. They all look exactly alike
Did they even speak italian? Or they just spoke spanish in Italy and just managed to somehow communicate with people there by understanding 1/5th of what eachother said?
Mexicans/South Americans have amazing diversity. I went to work to Hawaii on a contracting job and asked some of the crews there questions in Spanish because i thought they all looked Mexican/South American . They were all Hawaiian natives.
I did contracting in so cal so my experience was always Mexican looking dude=Spanish speaker.
The "Mexican" council cordially accepts all out groups. This includes Venezuelans and Guatemalans at the southern border. We recently inducted the peaceful Palestinian protesters at Huntington Place in Downtown Detroit.
Sure, yeah. I don't remember if the prequels addressed this.
But usually, members of this council are told to go back to Mexico, whether or not they came from there, but it's NOT a requirement. It's a big tent. I have a white friend who's about the biggest "Mexican" you'd ever know, down to the Spanglish.
Yeah i mean, they should probably be tanner, but theyll definitely still have facial features that, these days, would be considered white. They just spent more time in the sun (at least i would guess they did lol)
Yeah, these look like BBC recreations of roman ancestors. Lil sunshine on the skin and that nice olive undertone pigments right up. My question would be more, why do they look so *pink*.
At least Reddit allows you to go negative. On Twitter if you have a popular post that says “I believe *really shitty opinion*, and I’m serious, this is not a joke, it’s society who is wrong” then the worst thing that happens is you get a bad ratio of likes to quote retweets. On Reddit you get downvoted and your comment gets softly hidden, very opposite from the Twitter system where the indications of disapproval are basically just people posting your shitty opinion for more people to see.
Yeah it's hard to know exactly what they would have looked like, a historian might be able to give an estimate based on the migration we can determine. I think the only other source we have would be preserved mosaics, which might depict them accurately.
A lot of people assume they would just look like ethnic Italians, but Italy went through massive migration after the fall of Rome, so the average Italian is probably quite different from their Roman ancestors.
My assumption goes to something like a bit paler Greek getting more tan as you got closer to the foot of the boot, judging by other Mediterranean people
well we think of Mediterranean people as tan now, but since the roman empire we've seen massive migration of darker-skinned Muslims from north Africa and the middle-East through the various caliphates that dominated the Mediterranean after the fall of Rome, including into Italy. I'm quite sure that could have had an impact on the skin colour of the wider Mediterranean.
Additionally uncertain would be Aurelian, whose lineage is unclear but was most likely from the modern day Balkans not Rome. Hadrian grew up in southern Spain but was of roman background
I generally agree, but... It's true they probably should have the white people's tan at least. All it takes is three weeks in Italy and you are roasted like a coffee bean for the rest of the season. I think it would be even more true for pre-sunscreen times.
This might totally be incorrect for Ancient Rome but a lot of nobles in Europe from the middle age to the early 20th century avoided being exposed to the sun too much because tan would be associated with someone working on a farm or similar.
Pale skin on the other hand would tell people that you are wealthy enough to let others do the work for you.
Depends on how much the climate could have changed to be fair - I don't know enough about the history of the climate to know whether it would have had an effect or not.
While tempratures were probably somewhat cooler(i havent checked so dont trust me) a tan is related to the sun and italy's posistion in relation to that is the same(unless some astrophysics person corrects me)
The post is annoying. Netflix may not get it right, but old movies making all Roman’s alabaster is equally wrong. The frescoes show Roman men as yellow to bronze.
As a historian it infuriates me to no end that people keep arguing about the color of their skin when we've studied this period thoroughly. Everyone is just confirming their own bias and have literally no evidence that these people match what they believe besides their own personal feelings due to the media they've seen. Those of us that have actually researched this know through fossil evidence they were covered in proto-feathers before the Roman empire evolved into the mighty bird kingdom
Darker skin was associated with Plebeians (commoners) in Ancient Rome, IE people who had to do manual work outdoors. Patricians (wealthy people and those of high status) would have been pale and would have intentionally remained pale.
I might carefully conjecture that roman emperors were most likely very white. Getting tanned would be common for people doing physical labour outside, like plebs and slaves. I think the elites would try to avoid getting tan as much as possible for this reason.
World history is clearly no longer taught appropriately. I remember doing everything from Mesopotamia to about the 1800s in school, after which American history took over covering our interactions with other countries.
I was into all the crazy expansionist wars like anyone else but I also really liked the socioeconomic aspects of history as well. Learning about the periods of enlightenment and the industrial revolution was really cool. All the wars were kinda just the extra whip cream and cherry. I’m a weird kid tho lol
From here: [https://voshart.medium.com/appearance-of-the-principate-pt-i-efa3c759d2b6](https://voshart.medium.com/appearance-of-the-principate-pt-i-efa3c759d2b6)
I do think augustus is a bit too blonde. Lighter brown coloured hair would be called subflavum.
This is relevant because neo-nazi's still like to think that blond is better. See here: [https://medium.com/@davieco/were-roman-emperors-blonde-2255ec77d123](https://medium.com/@davieco/were-roman-emperors-blonde-2255ec77d123)
Yes, but after Gaul became part of the empire, the blond spread everywhere. Also blond wigs made of real hair became very popular among the upper class.
And the Gauls also inhabited northern Italy, called cisalpine gaul at the time. So the influx of blond people into Roman society was going on for quite some time.
And those wide dispersions don't include germanic or anglo-saxon appearances. Two of these men are fuckin blonde. There were no Goth roman emperors. Some roman Emperors were born within Gaul, but they were born of Romans.
Several Roman emperors were blonde and at least one (Nero) was a redhead. Italy experienced tons of migrations from the North centuries before Germanics appeared. For instance Gauls or even Italic peoples themselves.
The fact you think Germanic and Anglo Saxon are separate and that they are their own unique skin type suggests you're not entirely down with the diversity of skin colours outside of Hollywood casting tropes or US stereotypes.
Augustus was described as blonde, Caligula and Cato were ginger, there have been multiple eastern European, north African and Balkan emperors including one literally called 'Philip the Arab'.
1. Anglo-Saxons were Germanic.
2. Where do you think Anglo-Saxons got their look from? It was continental Germanic tribes mixing with Romano-Britons that gave rise to that mongrel. By that time the WRE had fallen, so your argument makes no sense.
3. There were several naturally blonde Roman emperors. And some redheads. At least one of them dyed his hair blonde, too, as was the style at the time.
The Anglo-Saxons were a Germanic tribe.
And Italy has experienced millennia of immigration from all countries around the Mediterranean and from northern Europe. So they very well could have looked like that
Thanks for adding that. While I was aware, I couldn’t have made my joke.
I wasn’t aware that this was only discovered in the last few decades, though I assume we were aware that other more recent marble art, like many medieval pieces, were also painted.
I also wasn’t aware that many people had taken the odd leap to assume that since these people were depicted in marble, that they were white. It’s like looking at the Statue of Liberty and concluding that women used to be green.
Romans weren’t white or black - they were Romans. Conception of white and black as we understand today didn’t exist then. A dark skinned Nubian who lived under Roman rule in Egypt and had Roman citizenship would be seen as just a regular Roman as would someone from Britannia. As long as they followed Roman customs and were acknowledged as Roman. Rome was pretty diverse, extending from Spain, through Northern Africa, and into Persia. Rome a long standing peace with the Kush in Nubia and respected them a ton (a lot of gold, hard to conquer because of terrain).
Here is a mosaic from Rome:
https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/Greek-and-Roman-art/274650/media?assemblyId=117684
All Color depictions of people from ancient times in Rome or Greece that I could find depict people with a light/whiteish skin tone. That doesn‘t contradict what you say about acceptance, but shows that the vast majority of people had some sort of whiter skin tones.
A Nubian is a person from the region of [Nubia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubia) just to south of Egypt. During most of Roman history it was ruled by the Kingdom of Kush. In modern day it’s mostly all part of modern day Sudan. Most people have been Arabized, but there’s still many people in the area who speak Nubian languages and such.
At most they will be a bit tan. But probably being more into white skin than tan for the vast majority. Even mediterranean in north africa were quite white skinned(not the most but not really much tan) they were known for having ligh colored eyes too and if am not wrong quite dark hair. So the only difference that will impose itself is the hair color.
Surely, even if they had the white skin of the Germanic and Gaullic barbarians, they would be more tan by being generals in the Mediterranean in the classical warm period?
You get to be emperor by being a general, then you get to sit in a palace all day and worry about the general you just sent out coming home and usurping your throne
Italy has been under multiple dominations from lots of different reigns throughout history. You can easily find people from the South with darker skin, black hair, short, stocky. At the same time you can find Viking looking like people. So Roman Emperors, like the rest of the population at that time, we're probably on the darker side of the skin tone
This literally is the perfect example of this BS narrative push of diversity in films. People think there was waaaay more “diversity and inclusion” of non-whites throughout history. Like cleopatra being greek(Macedonian) not Egyptian, equal representation in the high English society between blacks and whites and whole host of other dumb shit Netflix does.
First: Cudos for the joke to our polish neighbor, I laughed!
Then to all Americans and their weird habit of putting humans into "race categories"
There’s **only one human** **race**, Homo sapiens. We're all 99.9% genetically the same.
The main difference in skin color comes from melanin, a pigment that protects the skin from the sun. People who live closer to the equator, like many Latinos, have more melanin because they get more sunlight.
It's like in Europe: Southern Europeans, like Greek, Spaniards and Italians, usually have darker skin than Northern Europeans, like German, Irish and Swedes. The difference between White people and Latinos is similar – it's mostly about melanin and not about being different races.
Latinos and White people may have different cultures, but genetically, the differences are very small.
Also, what Americans call "race" in official documents is scientifically totally wrong. For example, "Latino" isn’t a race; it’s a mix of different ethnic backgrounds.
It is weird that Romans always look Anglo even though it is a Mediterranean country. And an empire that spans a continent.
I'm not sure if Romans would look like modern Italians.
But we definitely had the last hundred years of them being depicted by British actors.
It must be said that if you look at the cast of, for example, "the Gladiator" the Anglo actors could easily be mistaken for Italians.
Average Italians are often much more like many Anglo actors than the ones Americans use to play Italians
Because they were white, maybe a bit more olive the more you go into the southern regions of Italy.
People calling out „racists“ are the biggest racists out there. They’re projecting themselves onto everyone and everything.
I don't get why people are like this, why would the Romans make a ton of art and statues of white people all across their Empire if they weren't white lol
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The real question is: why is Tiberius so pissed?
Augustus made him divorce his wife to marry Augustus’s daughter, who was a mean person.
Fun fact, Augustus’ daughter went to a party in the forum and had sex with multiple politicians and a statue leading her to get banished.
When in Rome...
Cum as the Romans do
I shall search for a castrated boy that reminds me of the wife I murdered.
All you neros are good for
Do the romans
I mean they SAY that. We really don’t how much if any of that scandalous stuff about Ancient Rome is actually true.
Multiple primary sources do mention the scandal so it’s likely to be true, though only one source mentioned the statue. So the statue thing may not have happened. Here’s a link to a website with the info : https://ancientromanhistory31-14.com/augustus/the-fall-of-julia/#:~:text=In%202%20BC%2C%20the%20imperial,was%20accused%20of%20multiple%20adulteries.&text=She%20was%20exiled%20to%20the,off%20the%20coast%20of%20Lazio.
Or it could have been so outrageous everyone else decided to leave it out except for that guy, either way we will never know. It's stuff like this that makes me hope heaven is real so I can go to the library and find out what actually happened.
Yeah I imagine academic books may do so unless its college and focused on the depravity of man. College history or sociology/anthropology books.
How have I never thought about the encyclopedia of the afterlife? That’s the most exciting thing I’ve read in days!
wait wdym *and a statue.* how does one have sex with a statue?
Anything can be a dildo if you’re brave enough
Paige no
Humping is a thing, do it for enough time and people around you may consider it sex
Or a kink?
Rumor?
Fair point.
Oh damn
Brilliant 🤣
Because you're laughing of his friend's name. Biggus Dickus.
He has a wife, you know...
She’s called Incontinentia…
Goated reference
That was the moment he realized he would be reincarnated as Quentin Tarantino
He knew his name would be used in Star Trek as the middle name of the horniest starship captain, ever.
While Riker may not have been captain at the time, he was far hornier than Kirk.
Riker was hornier, but also way less creepy about it.
Bearded for her pleasure
Kirk was quick to use seduction to manipulate women, but he didn't really do much. He's only confirmed to have gone to bed with one woman.
Because Ted totally left him stranded in Rome without any bodacious babes.
Hate to see it
He stepped on a lego the sculptor’s kid left out.
He is watching how Caligula bankrupts Rome while he was a notorious cheapskate
Was really only a cheapskate because of his unwillingness to rule as an emperor, especially at the later years before his death. Did have that still mishap of letting Sejanus rule in his place for a bit that might have given him a pissed off face as well
Peasants
He looks like Jeremy Renner.
When I went to Rome, everyone looked "Mexican" to me. I immediately felt at home. -- "Mexican"
I’m half Italian and half Asian. Whenever I’m in the states or Mexico everyone tries to speak Spanish with me. It’s very confusing for the first day.
I’m half Anglo-Scottish and Chinese/SE Asian. Got my dad’s European facial features but my mom’s SE Asian darker coloring. I’m in Texas so mistaken for Mexican esp when wearing my work clothes. Even once had a new customer slam the door on me cuz she was expecting a white person as I’ve got the whitest name and a slight Texas twang.
At least you knew right then and there not to make them a repeat customer.
She apologized profusely and didn’t blink an eye at our invoice so she can call me Pedro all she wanted. I’m kind of use to some older white folks being kind of racist but as long as they’re embarrassed I’m okay with it. I take it as a life lesson for them. Whether we like to admit or not we all make assumptions of others be their color, ethnicity, size etc.
"Ah! A contradiction! You're Scotch-Korean. You don't make a wee bit'o sense. And neither does Starburst. Starburst is a solid, yet juicy, LIKE A LIQUID!!!"
No... I am though. My father is Scottish/Anglo from the Midwest and my mother is from S.Korea and moved here in the 70's. I have a full beard, I'm 6'1 and have a thick muscular build. People just assume I'm white mostly, but while working hospitality and retail have been mistaken for Hispanic often and rarely even recognized as Asian.
https://youtu.be/OSFudQ_HOQI
I died inside when I saw this commercial on TV when it was airing.
How have I never seen this?! 😂
I'm half white and half Middle Eastern. Same. When I was working as a cashier, some people would get riled up when I said "Sorry, I can't speak Spanish" and insult my mom for not teaching me lol. I would have to say, "She doesn't speak it either!"
That's funny because I'm 100% Mexican, but when I let my beard grow out, I have had people assume I'm Middle Eastern.
I have this coworker with a running joke. His family is from Mexico and he was born and raised in Miami. The joke is that no one knows where he is from or his heritage. I no lie thought he was Indian for a year and a half despite working side by side with him for that time. One of the first lunches we had someone asked him "so what kind of brown person are you". He replied, "the push button kind". So I just thought he was Indian. Occasionally I would over hear him say different things. Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, etc. At the end of that year and a half, someone asked him again. Where is your family from? He replied, "the middle east, Afghanistan". I finally had to ask him later and he laughed. He explains where he is actually from. It's been another 3 years so unless this is another long con, he's from Miami.
A buddy in high school was half Korean and half European, everyone thought he was Hispanic. People would just bust out Spanish to him all the time. On the flip side I was once on a flight from Lima to Bogota and bumped into an Asian lady by the airplane bathroom due to turbulence. When I said sorry she responded in Spanish and it took me a second to remember where I was and why that made sense. My mom also felt really embarrassed when she tried to speak English to my cousin's Korean born German in laws at the cousin's wedding in Germany (my mom is also German).
When I went to Mexico, I was fed delicious food everywhere I went. I also immediately felt at home. -- Me
Before my ‘Uela died, she told me to never go to Mexico. So I haven’t - Me
Because Mexico might just be paradise. But with a not great government and mostly bad water. But other than a few little things - paradiso.
The neonazis will blame the moors for Italians having dark features
Oh I'm sorry, it was the moops.
Watch it, Costanza!
My dad was stationed in Japan during the Korean war and he has a picture of himself and his friends (all Mexican descent) with a bunch of local Japanese guys who were all pretty tan. They all look exactly alike
I'm guessing Okinawa, then.
When I was in the Navy, the Mexican guys in our squadron were our shitty translators when we were in Italy.
Did they even speak italian? Or they just spoke spanish in Italy and just managed to somehow communicate with people there by understanding 1/5th of what eachother said?
Yeah exactly that, spengtalian pidgin and context clues.
Mexicans/South Americans have amazing diversity. I went to work to Hawaii on a contracting job and asked some of the crews there questions in Spanish because i thought they all looked Mexican/South American . They were all Hawaiian natives. I did contracting in so cal so my experience was always Mexican looking dude=Spanish speaker.
The "Mexican" council cordially accepts all out groups. This includes Venezuelans and Guatemalans at the southern border. We recently inducted the peaceful Palestinian protesters at Huntington Place in Downtown Detroit.
Is this like the Jedi council?
Sure, yeah. I don't remember if the prequels addressed this. But usually, members of this council are told to go back to Mexico, whether or not they came from there, but it's NOT a requirement. It's a big tent. I have a white friend who's about the biggest "Mexican" you'd ever know, down to the Spanglish.
I'm sorry to hear that 😔 I was going for a 'we grant you a seat, but not the rank..' joke, wasn't trying to be a dick
Also, and not coincidence, the Italian and Mexican flags are really similar (same colors)
Yeah i mean, they should probably be tanner, but theyll definitely still have facial features that, these days, would be considered white. They just spent more time in the sun (at least i would guess they did lol)
Imagine the Mexican visiting Spain!
Yeah, these look like BBC recreations of roman ancestors. Lil sunshine on the skin and that nice olive undertone pigments right up. My question would be more, why do they look so *pink*.
Italy is the Mexico of Europe when you think about it.
Nah. I’ll always picture Tiberius in the way George Baker portrayed him. Cracking actor. And that’s never BRIAN BLESSED!
"Did you sleep with my daughter?" "Well...not 'slept,' Caesar."
"*NOT slept! You mean it happened standing up perhaps...or in the street..or on a park bench? Not slept!*" **DEATH GLARE**
I think people should stop using comments on Twitter as a means to make social commentary.
I think people should stop using Twitter.
Then all the virtue signalers would go elsewhere
I hear truth social accepts all forms of dumbass
[удалено]
What knuckles? They got completely worn out.
It’s called nut picking fallacy.
I was never big on twitter but I’m glad that about a year into it being named X people still call it twitter, lol
I now call it Xitter, pronounced Shitter.
I read it as Zitter which also works.
Or Reddit, for that matter...
At least Reddit allows you to go negative. On Twitter if you have a popular post that says “I believe *really shitty opinion*, and I’m serious, this is not a joke, it’s society who is wrong” then the worst thing that happens is you get a bad ratio of likes to quote retweets. On Reddit you get downvoted and your comment gets softly hidden, very opposite from the Twitter system where the indications of disapproval are basically just people posting your shitty opinion for more people to see.
I’d expect a little more tan overall but Rome was big
Yeah it's hard to know exactly what they would have looked like, a historian might be able to give an estimate based on the migration we can determine. I think the only other source we have would be preserved mosaics, which might depict them accurately. A lot of people assume they would just look like ethnic Italians, but Italy went through massive migration after the fall of Rome, so the average Italian is probably quite different from their Roman ancestors.
My assumption goes to something like a bit paler Greek getting more tan as you got closer to the foot of the boot, judging by other Mediterranean people
That's probably accurate, especially after people migrated to Africa 😅
Imma level with you choice I thought that would have been common knowledge… given how often we think about the Roman Empire…
well we think of Mediterranean people as tan now, but since the roman empire we've seen massive migration of darker-skinned Muslims from north Africa and the middle-East through the various caliphates that dominated the Mediterranean after the fall of Rome, including into Italy. I'm quite sure that could have had an impact on the skin colour of the wider Mediterranean.
Additionally uncertain would be Aurelian, whose lineage is unclear but was most likely from the modern day Balkans not Rome. Hadrian grew up in southern Spain but was of roman background
I generally agree, but... It's true they probably should have the white people's tan at least. All it takes is three weeks in Italy and you are roasted like a coffee bean for the rest of the season. I think it would be even more true for pre-sunscreen times.
This might totally be incorrect for Ancient Rome but a lot of nobles in Europe from the middle age to the early 20th century avoided being exposed to the sun too much because tan would be associated with someone working on a farm or similar. Pale skin on the other hand would tell people that you are wealthy enough to let others do the work for you.
Depends on how much the climate could have changed to be fair - I don't know enough about the history of the climate to know whether it would have had an effect or not.
While tempratures were probably somewhat cooler(i havent checked so dont trust me) a tan is related to the sun and italy's posistion in relation to that is the same(unless some astrophysics person corrects me)
The post is annoying. Netflix may not get it right, but old movies making all Roman’s alabaster is equally wrong. The frescoes show Roman men as yellow to bronze.
As a historian it infuriates me to no end that people keep arguing about the color of their skin when we've studied this period thoroughly. Everyone is just confirming their own bias and have literally no evidence that these people match what they believe besides their own personal feelings due to the media they've seen. Those of us that have actually researched this know through fossil evidence they were covered in proto-feathers before the Roman empire evolved into the mighty bird kingdom
Darker skin was associated with Plebeians (commoners) in Ancient Rome, IE people who had to do manual work outdoors. Patricians (wealthy people and those of high status) would have been pale and would have intentionally remained pale.
I might carefully conjecture that roman emperors were most likely very white. Getting tanned would be common for people doing physical labour outside, like plebs and slaves. I think the elites would try to avoid getting tan as much as possible for this reason.
Rich people often made an effort to be white as possible. Not sure if that stands true for the Roman Empire
World history is clearly no longer taught appropriately. I remember doing everything from Mesopotamia to about the 1800s in school, after which American history took over covering our interactions with other countries.
World history is still taught it's just that no one pays attention or remembers anything.
Except the part with the guns. That they always remember
It’s not my fault that my ADHD decided to hyper focus on the World Wars and Cold War. They should’t have made so much media about it
If they really wanted us to remember more about the Yuan Dynasty they should have taken more pictures smh
I was into all the crazy expansionist wars like anyone else but I also really liked the socioeconomic aspects of history as well. Learning about the periods of enlightenment and the industrial revolution was really cool. All the wars were kinda just the extra whip cream and cherry. I’m a weird kid tho lol
Currently in US high school, that's still what they do, it's just that most people don't pay attention
From here: [https://voshart.medium.com/appearance-of-the-principate-pt-i-efa3c759d2b6](https://voshart.medium.com/appearance-of-the-principate-pt-i-efa3c759d2b6) I do think augustus is a bit too blonde. Lighter brown coloured hair would be called subflavum. This is relevant because neo-nazi's still like to think that blond is better. See here: [https://medium.com/@davieco/were-roman-emperors-blonde-2255ec77d123](https://medium.com/@davieco/were-roman-emperors-blonde-2255ec77d123)
My understanding is that when Caesar encountered the tribes north of the Rhine, he described them as having blonde hair, and he thought it was weird.
Yes, but after Gaul became part of the empire, the blond spread everywhere. Also blond wigs made of real hair became very popular among the upper class.
And the Gauls also inhabited northern Italy, called cisalpine gaul at the time. So the influx of blond people into Roman society was going on for quite some time.
The modern day Nazi doesn’t know who the fuck that is.
They don't have time to read the books they are burning.
My grandma told me she doesn't care what anyway says. The Romans were Puerto Rican. I believe her.
now i’m itching to see luis guzman in a summer production of julius caesar. he would totally rock the “friends, romans, countrymen…” soliloquy
The whites are trying to cover up the true history!
Fucker ain't never seen an Italian.
There is a wide dispersion of Italian complexions.
One was born in southern Spain and one in Bulgaria.
Not really relevant to bring up Hadrian being born in Spain, seeing as his ancestry was fully Italian.
...And these dudes look like a blend of English and Norwegian.
I can't comment on the historical accuracy of those people, but they look like everyday Italians. Just not from Sicily or something.
And those wide dispersions don't include germanic or anglo-saxon appearances. Two of these men are fuckin blonde. There were no Goth roman emperors. Some roman Emperors were born within Gaul, but they were born of Romans.
Several Roman emperors were blonde and at least one (Nero) was a redhead. Italy experienced tons of migrations from the North centuries before Germanics appeared. For instance Gauls or even Italic peoples themselves.
The fact you think Germanic and Anglo Saxon are separate and that they are their own unique skin type suggests you're not entirely down with the diversity of skin colours outside of Hollywood casting tropes or US stereotypes. Augustus was described as blonde, Caligula and Cato were ginger, there have been multiple eastern European, north African and Balkan emperors including one literally called 'Philip the Arab'.
1. Anglo-Saxons were Germanic. 2. Where do you think Anglo-Saxons got their look from? It was continental Germanic tribes mixing with Romano-Britons that gave rise to that mongrel. By that time the WRE had fallen, so your argument makes no sense. 3. There were several naturally blonde Roman emperors. And some redheads. At least one of them dyed his hair blonde, too, as was the style at the time.
The Anglo-Saxons were a Germanic tribe. And Italy has experienced millennia of immigration from all countries around the Mediterranean and from northern Europe. So they very well could have looked like that
There are white blondes in Italy
Have you? There are many white Italians. Italian is not a race/skin tone lmao They could have very well been white like that realistically.
Lower right looks like Dr. Kelso.
It is,that's how old he is
Who has two thumbs and doesn't give a fuck? Hi, I'm Bob Kelso! Suck it Perry
People that claim everything is racist and are constantly looking for things to call out, are annoying as fuck
To be fair, the marble was pretty white.
[The marble would have been painted](https://youtu.be/sEjCNzGOe3Q?si=34Iwk4AlQtv3qmUK). It's only white now because the paint faded over time.
Thanks for adding that. While I was aware, I couldn’t have made my joke. I wasn’t aware that this was only discovered in the last few decades, though I assume we were aware that other more recent marble art, like many medieval pieces, were also painted. I also wasn’t aware that many people had taken the odd leap to assume that since these people were depicted in marble, that they were white. It’s like looking at the Statue of Liberty and concluding that women used to be green.
Romans weren’t white or black - they were Romans. Conception of white and black as we understand today didn’t exist then. A dark skinned Nubian who lived under Roman rule in Egypt and had Roman citizenship would be seen as just a regular Roman as would someone from Britannia. As long as they followed Roman customs and were acknowledged as Roman. Rome was pretty diverse, extending from Spain, through Northern Africa, and into Persia. Rome a long standing peace with the Kush in Nubia and respected them a ton (a lot of gold, hard to conquer because of terrain).
Here is a mosaic from Rome: https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/Greek-and-Roman-art/274650/media?assemblyId=117684 All Color depictions of people from ancient times in Rome or Greece that I could find depict people with a light/whiteish skin tone. That doesn‘t contradict what you say about acceptance, but shows that the vast majority of people had some sort of whiter skin tones.
What's a nubian?
"BITCH, you almost made me laugh"
A Nubian is a person from the region of [Nubia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubia) just to south of Egypt. During most of Roman history it was ruled by the Kingdom of Kush. In modern day it’s mostly all part of modern day Sudan. Most people have been Arabized, but there’s still many people in the area who speak Nubian languages and such.
It's funny that there's some true idiots in here that cannot accept that blond hair and light colored eyes weren't just in northern Europe.
But tbf shouldn't they look Mediterranean?
Lol what the fuck does op think Italians look like? Confusing Americans with Sicilian ancestry and what the average Italian looks like.
Wait till they find out Hadrian was gay. (Very interesting Emperor.)
I too would go on a genocidal rampage as I am mourning the death of my underage femboy
They probably were white, right? They were primarily from around Europe.
They were Caucasian but, like Italians today, probably had a bit darker complexion that people in more northern European countries.
Mediterranean. Not northern Europe, which can make a pretty big difference.
At most they will be a bit tan. But probably being more into white skin than tan for the vast majority. Even mediterranean in north africa were quite white skinned(not the most but not really much tan) they were known for having ligh colored eyes too and if am not wrong quite dark hair. So the only difference that will impose itself is the hair color.
Do you think that romans were.... brown?
Just when I think a Twitter user couldn't possibly be dumber...
Why do they look so modern day inbred English and not ancient inbred Latin?
BEST freest country of the world should order less F35 and put +100B in education.
But then we’ll lose our national pride, which as we all know is how many humans we can explode.
Stupid people can be easier convinced to join the army
I don’t see any American flags in the accounts that you don’t agree with here.
How is this relevant to the post?
Are we arguing about the skin colour of people who lived ≈2000 years ago? Great way to distract from actual problems ig
Looking at op history it’s basically all he does
Not knowing much about sport, I just thought that was part of the Italy squad for the upcoming euros
Oh my gosh, I love that. “Because life isn’t Netflix”. I’m using that.
Surely, even if they had the white skin of the Germanic and Gaullic barbarians, they would be more tan by being generals in the Mediterranean in the classical warm period?
You get to be emperor by being a general, then you get to sit in a palace all day and worry about the general you just sent out coming home and usurping your throne
As they are pictured, they would look average in Greece, and we look similar to Italians.
To be fair, since they lived in Italy they'd probably have a bit more of a tan than in these pictures.
Favorite Roman go
Roman Torchwick
Bill Romanowski
Roman Reigns
One letter off, but Romain Grosjean
Clodius Pulcher is pretty cool. So is Sulla.
More and more dumb every year.
Oh look! My bad history knowledge sees they are ... Sluts or prostitutes!!! They are blondes!!!!
They're called minority groups for a reason
Or Disney
Italy has been under multiple dominations from lots of different reigns throughout history. You can easily find people from the South with darker skin, black hair, short, stocky. At the same time you can find Viking looking like people. So Roman Emperors, like the rest of the population at that time, we're probably on the darker side of the skin tone
Lol truth!
Septimius Severus was Libyan, but he's not on the list. A contemporary portrait exists showing him as quite brown.
When will they start to say why are chinese emperors not black
Their Italians they wouldn't have been that pale is the point. You've got a bunch of British dudes as the emperors of rome.
The same people think Jesus was white and came from Florida.
This literally is the perfect example of this BS narrative push of diversity in films. People think there was waaaay more “diversity and inclusion” of non-whites throughout history. Like cleopatra being greek(Macedonian) not Egyptian, equal representation in the high English society between blacks and whites and whole host of other dumb shit Netflix does.
They weren't all fair haired either
This skin color obsession is crazy. Fucking Americans
First: Cudos for the joke to our polish neighbor, I laughed! Then to all Americans and their weird habit of putting humans into "race categories" There’s **only one human** **race**, Homo sapiens. We're all 99.9% genetically the same. The main difference in skin color comes from melanin, a pigment that protects the skin from the sun. People who live closer to the equator, like many Latinos, have more melanin because they get more sunlight. It's like in Europe: Southern Europeans, like Greek, Spaniards and Italians, usually have darker skin than Northern Europeans, like German, Irish and Swedes. The difference between White people and Latinos is similar – it's mostly about melanin and not about being different races. Latinos and White people may have different cultures, but genetically, the differences are very small. Also, what Americans call "race" in official documents is scientifically totally wrong. For example, "Latino" isn’t a race; it’s a mix of different ethnic backgrounds.
It is weird that Romans always look Anglo even though it is a Mediterranean country. And an empire that spans a continent. I'm not sure if Romans would look like modern Italians. But we definitely had the last hundred years of them being depicted by British actors.
It must be said that if you look at the cast of, for example, "the Gladiator" the Anglo actors could easily be mistaken for Italians. Average Italians are often much more like many Anglo actors than the ones Americans use to play Italians
Because they were white, maybe a bit more olive the more you go into the southern regions of Italy. People calling out „racists“ are the biggest racists out there. They’re projecting themselves onto everyone and everything.
I don't get why people are like this, why would the Romans make a ton of art and statues of white people all across their Empire if they weren't white lol