The Ancients - Race in Antiquity

Episode Date: October 9, 2022

History is littered with devastating accounts of prejudice that shines a harsh light on the atrocities humans have inflicted on each other for centuries.But has racism always plagued our society? From the African son of Peter the Great of Russia, to the one-eyed black leader of the Kushite army - Warrior Queen Amanirenas, it seems skin colour presented no barriers for a person of African decent to amount to greatness in antiquity.In this episode, Tristan is joined by Luke Pepera who is a writer, broadcaster, anthropologist, and historian to talk about the attitudes towards race in the ancient world.For more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's podcast, I'm recording this intro on my travels in my car as I venture down to the south coast this lovely day in early October. But enough of that, because on to today's episode.

I'm delighted because we've got back on the podcast, finally, Luke Pepperer. Luke, he's been on the podcast before, but it's been a while since we chatted to Luke. The last time he came on was to talk all about the Kingdom of Kush almost two years ago. It was about time we got him back on the podcast. He was keen to come back on. He is writing a book at the moment, a massive book all about the history of Africa and of course there's quite a lot of ancient history in that too. So we've recorded a couple of podcasts with Luke on ancient African history but this one it's a really interesting one and it's a really important one too we explore ancient Mediterranean Greco-Roman and Egyptian attitudes towards race 2,000, 3,000 years ago and it was a fascinating discussion where the colour

of your skin didn't affect how people viewed you, how people treated you, it didn't negatively affect you in any way. It was great to get Luke to talk about this important topic and I do hope you enjoy. So without further ado, to talk all about race in antiquity, here's Luke. Luke, good to have you back on the podcast, and it's good to be doing it in person this time. Yes, great to be here, Tristan. Thank you for inviting me. It's a long time, no see. I mean, last time was was the Kingdom of Kush wasn't it? It was like more than a year almost two years ago. Yeah, yeah it was that was really fun to do talking about the Kushites

and their culture, their politics and their achievements so yeah it's really great to be back But Luke this is such an interesting very important topic isn't it? Looking at ancient Mediterranean ancient European attitudes towards sub-Saharan Africans back in antiquity, looking at from ancient Egyptian times to Roman times, it's really interesting how back then

there isn't this discrimination which seems to occur later in history. Yes. What's fascinating actually about peoples and especially European peoples and more specifically Mediterranean peoples' attitudes towards Africans is that for them, they don't see Africans as being inherently inferior. There's nothing particularly heinous about being a dark-seeing African or a sub-Saharan African. In fact, it's actually quite the opposite. I mean, not only are they looking, for example, at individual's achievements, but there is, you know, in their writings, you don't get a sense that Africans as a group specifically.

I mean, obviously, ancient writers are known for talking about, let's say, barbarian peoples, i.e. non-Greeks, non-Romans, those people who aren't citizens, etc. You know, there's the history of slavery and all that type of stuff. But ancient Africans aren't targeted specifically. In fact, as a group, they're often lauded in different ways. They're often lauded in different ways. And it's such a drastic, or it's so different from what happens later, especially in the early modern or modern periods with the advent of the slave trade in the Americas,

most particularly, and what's happening in Virginia and with the advent of the plantation economies in the Americas and how that leads people to take on new ideas or to develop new ideologies concerning Africans. I think that's so interesting, a point to make straight away, Luke, in the fact that Greeks and Romans, they view everyone who's not a Greek or a Roman as a barbarian. So everyone outside Greece and Rome, they view very much the same as barbarians. And it's not like a specific attack on sub-Saharan Africa or the colour of a person's skin back in antiquity.

Exactly. Because, I mean, they do actually note, for example, the features, like the physical features of Africans. They talk about blackness, they talk about facial features, etc. They're basically just describing them in the same way that we today would describe, for example, a blonde person. You know, those features are just,

this is what that person looked like. It doesn't have all these connotations about different things. Relating to your question, what is actually interesting is that, obviously, with the relationship between these two cultures, the fact that they make contact and actually you have for example when the greeks control part of north africa and they're coming up against kush and you know the

romans obviously as well you have africans nubian sub-saharan africans who are for example joining the greek and roman armies and you know who are becoming citizens in that respect and they're given all the full rights and respects of being citizens so as soon as they become greek and roman whether they're born in the city or they achieve something and because of that they're rewarded with that status their dreams are just the same as you know any other greek roman and then they themselves are looking at non-greeks and non-romans no matter the color of their skin as barbarians so the skin color element the ancestry element isn't as big a feature in the ancient world as what seems to be the case.

And also, as you're highlighting there, with the Greco-Roman world, also with Carthaginians, with Egyptians, and all the other places around the ancient Mediterranean, these interactions with people from Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, their regular occurrences from, say, the spread of the Greek world, you know, colonies and city-states in North Africa and so on and so forth. These interactions, are they a mixture of trading interactions, military interactions? What do we know about? Yeah, they seem actually to be mainly military.

That's like the first and the main way in which the Greeks and the Romans are encountering Africans. I mean, the reason we know that is actually because of the way in which they talk about them and the specific qualities that they laud. For example, the Greek Romans often talk about the Kushites in particular, their military capacity and their use, for example, of certain weaponry, of certain strategies, when actually the Greeks and Romans themselves, they love hiring Nubian mercenaries and soldiers to fight for them because this is something that they notice. And this is one of the main ways in which they come to contact them is through warfare. There is also trade, especially in times of peace. I mean, the Greeks and the Romans especially wanted

materials from the African interior. So things like ivory, animal skins, cushions also big on gold. But because of where it's located, sort of you have Arabia and Persia to the east, and then you have the East African coast, and then you have the East African coast and then you have the interior of Africa so it's like a trading hub where materials are passing from you know lots of different places through Kush and then being shipped towards Egypt and then from there into the Mediterranean so Kush is also known as being a place from where lots of exotic goods from further afield are being transported and there is also that demand on the Greco-Roman side. So it is in their favour, or it's in their interest as well,

in times of peace to develop those trading relationships. That military prowess is fascinating. We will come back to it. I'm going on a little tangent bias now, because Hannibal Parker, I find him a fascinating figure. But one of his key units was his Numidian cavalry. And actually then the Romans embraced his Numidian cavalry against him later on at Zama when they rejoined the Romans. But it seems a similar case how with the kingdom of Kush in that area of Africa compared with the Numidians in that area of Africa,

they become renowned for their military expertise as one of their key features for these Greco-Roman authors. Yeah, no, exactly. And again, like I said, because of Kush's wealth, there was also the risk of conquest as well. The Greeks, but also especially the Romans after Augustus Octavian takes power, their initial plan after they take power is to conquer Kush. And that's when they come up against Queen Amarni Rainus and aren't able to defeat her. And then, you know, the peace treaty is signed, etc. get a very strong taste of the Kushite military prowess and you know exactly like you say it's noticing that and then wanting to use that military capacity you know in ways that would benefit them and that necessitates then not only making peace but then also sort of inculcating certain Nubians etc into their own culture which again ties into the race angle because there's no sense of what we can't let them in to our culture and use their skills because they're of african ancestry it's actually you know these people are good at this thing let's you know use them and make them citizens and let's integrate them or some of them

into our culture to make ourselves stronger that's the attitude because they bring so much because they bring value yeah you know it's not something that's going to be stopped or barred because of their african ancestry it's not something that they're thinking about in that respect opposite to what you get for example in early modern america about for example if you let uh you know africans in society you know weakens it and keeping the european stock pure and all that i mean none of that stuff applies they're actually very open about mixing with these people and using their skills to benefit them and being quite an open society and this is what you see at the age one and something i don't think we realize actually how open the ancient and medieval worlds were and how much

contact there was between cultures and the nature of migration etc was different but i mean this is long before for example you have you know the advent of nations like modern nationalism which is some people would argue is a 19th century phenomenon so the sense of you know borders this idea that a certain group of people who look a certain way emerged in a certain place and have lived there for all of time and there's never been any mixing and all that type of stuff doesn't come in until much later you mentioned then kushais quite a few times in nubia yeah i know it's a key area for you so whereabouts are we talking with the kushites who are the kushites whereabouts we're talking yeah so the kushites basically nubia was what the egyptians called what is now today sort of south egypt and mainly sudan at one period in time the

egyptians conquered nubia and in order to help them administrate it better they split it into two states and the southern one was called Kush but Kush is sort of identified with three kingdoms each of these kingdoms was named after their own capital so Mero for example is the last one and before that you had Napata but that's where we're talking is basically modern day Sudan. When you're approaching this topic for your book and looking at antiquity and the attitudes towards sub-Saharan Africans, what sorts of sources were available? What sorts of sources were you looking at to get an idea of the attitudes at that time? What's great is that we have especially preserved is a lot of good ancient Greek writers. So, you know, Herodotus. Herodotus

is someone who writes actually quite a lot about, you know about Africa and is a bit more measured in how he talks about, for example, dark-skinned Africans. Strabo is another one who is particularly useful, especially when he writes about the period where Armani Reynos was alive and he talks about that conflict between her and Rome and he talks about the Kushites as well in a fairly neutral way in terms of their race or ancestry or skin colour. It's not something he derides. So those two were absolutely essential for, you know, looking at this period

and also looking at this particular aspect of, you know, history or culture in my book. Before we go on to Prodigy, let's talk about New Kingdom Egypt. And, you know, this time more than a millennium BC. What do we know about their interactions with, I't know if you say the kushites yeah yeah seeing kush wealthy there was a period of time where the egyptians wanted to rule them i mean about 800 bc you do have a reversal of that where a nubian dynasty takes over in egypt with tahaka and that's then a lot of adoption of Egyptian political practice, belief systems, language, you know, hieroglyphics entering Nubia. But it is somewhat of a tense relationship,

because the Kushites want the natural resources that Nubia have, or that the Kushites have. And the Kushites are quite sort of wary about anybody encroaching upon them, which is, I think, partly why they develop such a militaristic attitude and become so well developed militarily that's how I describe the relationship between the two states I'm presuming as well if they're so wealthy they have these resources that are so highly sought after that can you imagine Kushite traders and merchantmen oh of course up the river Nile then across the Mediterranean and so on and so forth. Yes, of course. I mean, definitely going to Egypt. I mean, the trade networks are really well developed by this point. You know, I mean, there are definitely caravans coming from the interior into Kush and then probably going to Egypt as well.

And then afterwards being taken via seaways into the Mediterranean, which obviously saved Kushites having to or people in general having to make that treacherous journey in person. And there are people who are experienced traders, who have experience also with people from the interior, who are able to organise these expeditions and these caravans and to move quite a high volume of precious goods across nations, even at this earlier time. All right, then let talk to Rodasys. Talk me through what he says therefore about sub-Saharan Africans and the general idea we get from him. Yeah well I mean he's talking about people, individuals particularly who he admires, some of whom happen to be African like sub-Saharan African and it's just in the way that he's talking about them you get no sense of him being prejudiced towards them because they are African. And that seems to be the nature, actually, not just of his writings, but, you know, a lot of people who are writing about African sub-Saharan Africans,

mainly Kushites, because these are the ones with whom they're coming into contact at that time, or even from things that they've heard from other people traveling about the way the Kushites do things. I mean, sometimes you get the sense from when you're thinking or talking about, for example, what's happening in America is that no matter the status of achievements of the person, they're always going to be perceived as a certain way, i.e. lower or inferior because of their skin color. And the key thing to remember

is that that's not what happens in the ancient world. There's nothing about being African, darker skinned African that holds you back in that sense. It is this person is royal, this person achieved royal, this person achieved this and that, therefore they deserve to be praised, as opposed to this person achieved this or that, despite, you know, being from, Kershaw from being, you know, quote unquote black, or that this person is a fluke. That kind of narrative is not something that, you know,

you see in the writings of Verontas and also some other ancient Mediterranean as well. Well, I mean, let's focus on some of these highly praised individuals. We've talked about Marnarenus in the past. Yes. Certainly one of those figures who is highly praised in the sources we have surviving. Who is she and how does she fit into the story? Marnarenus became the Queen of Cush soon after Augustus becomes Emperor of Rome after the suicides of Mark Antony and Cleopatra. And it's at a point in time where the Romans are trying to push a bit further into Africa.

I mean, she's written about by Strabo, who I mentioned earlier. I mean, she takes over fighting against the Romans as they're kind of advancing. And she puts up such an effective resistance that the Romans essentially give up. In the 20 BCs, her representatives go to the island of Samos where Augustus is and then end up signing a peace treaty, which basically gives all the Kushites all the concessions that they wanted because the Romans had been trying to impose taxes and had conquered parts of northern Kush and, you know, had been sort of creating havoc in that respect for the Kushites. And the Kushites, led by Immanuel Reynos, are resisting against this.

And then they end up achieving the things that they wanted in this peace settlement. But what's interesting is that in Strabo's account of her achievements, he talks about her military powers. He compares her to an Amazon. You know, he describes her as this one-eyed warrior queen. He describes her as being manly. But I wonder if that could just be a prejudice because she's doing things not expected of greek women whereas in africa she was just one of many

warrior queens or in kush anyway beginning around 200 bc you have women or queens who become the supreme authority in kush even the rulership of kush had always been matrilineal where it was you know the king's sister's sons one of whom was elected to be the next king and then his mother became the queen mother and she was actually the most important person in the kingdom but what's interesting is this trade with when he's talking about her if i remember he doesn't actually mention for example her skin color you know when he's describing her he talks about her as like i said a one-eyed warrior queen of the amazon type that's the way in which he speaks of her but he he gives no, or at least very little, lip service to the Kararvishan,

to African ancestry, apart from to say that she was the queen of the Kushites and was doing this or that in order to resist the Roman advance. It's absolutely fascinating. And you get those stories. I'm guessing there are probably more stories as well of other individuals.

Yes, I mean, there are sometimes short accounts. Sometimes gurus also talk about the virtues they think are important for kingship. When they're picking examples, you know, some of them pick Kushite rulers. Focusing on individuals' achievements seems to be much more their game there, rather than stereotyping, generalizing, based on a physical feature, a distinctive group physical feature and when you look at that and compare it to especially what's happening later i mean it's fascinating but also it's quite a refreshing perspective you know it reminds you that what we take for granted as being

such an important and distinctive feature of the modern world skin color-based racism you know it's not something that has always existed it's actually something that has sort of been cultivated yes or fabricated not necessarily just materially but you know in the minds of certain people because of certain circumstances those circumstances for example in the americas being where the enslaved population became majority african and then in order to control that population the Virginians were imposing laws that targeted African-ness because they happened to make up the entirety of their enslaved population. That is when it all changes, that's more than a millennial history. Yeah exactly, exactly. I think the legacy of the ancient world in terms of how Africans are

treated feeds into a lot more into the medieval world where even actually there you have the beginnings of a trade and enslaved africans at least in europe it's one not exclusively africans who are traded to be slaves i mean you get people for example in laguete or portugal i mean you have people coming from the balkan states people coming from greece you have people coming from turkey so the populations there are mixed but they're mixed all the way throughout alessandro de medici who had african ancestry and he becomes the first duke of florence but the point is that the attitudes to race skin color there it is about the individual their achievements his lineage you know the african blackness does

not work against him because he's still promoted to become duke of florence because the key thing is that he's italian he's also a medici and that's more the attitude that exists in the ancient world so you're looking at the individual you're not stereotyping you're not generalizing based on is that he's Italian, he's also a Medici. And that's more the attitude that exists in the ancient world, is that you're looking at the individual, you're not stereotyping, you're not generalizing based on Africanist. But more importantly, there is nothing specifically about being African that makes you inferior. Africans aren't seen as an inherently inferior group of people. Hi there, I'm Don Wildman, the host of the brand new podcast, American History Hit.

Join me twice a week as I explore the past to help us understand the United States today. You'll hear how codebreakers uncovered secret Japanese plans for the Battle of Midway, visit Chief Poetin as he prepares for war with the British, see Walt Disney accuse his former colleagues of being communists, and uncover the hidden history that lies beneath Central Park. From pre-colonial America to independence, slavery to civil rights, the gold rush to the space race, I'll be speaking to leading experts to delve into America's past. New episodes dropping every Monday and Thursday. So join me on American History Hit, a podcast by History Hit.

The Romans, when they're overtaking the Carthaginians there, they install a number of client kings. Yes, yes, exactly. And that's in history as well, I believe. And once again, it's nothing to do with skin colour. It's the individual. That is the best person to rule over that part of the empire as a client king. And it's so fascinating, Luke, when you look at that, let's say Hellenistic, ancient Mediterranean and Near East world, post-Alexander the Great, let's say Hellenistic ancient Mediterranean and Near East world, post Alexander the Great, where you therefore get people coming from India and being in the Athenian Agora, or

with the Kingdom of Kursh down the River Nile, very much connected with the Mediterranean, perhaps having traders all the way up in Hadrian's Wall or wherever. This was a place where people could travel for one reason or another, And you would get these people with different skin colours going to these various places in the ancient Mediterranean and beyond and being able to do stuff, to trade or whatever. Exactly. I mean, it's what makes a person Greek? What makes a person, you know, Roman? What makes a person Portuguese?

Nowadays, skin colour is a part of that. You know, we identify people from a certain national background as also having a certain skin colour. It's known that a Ghanaian would necessarily be dark skinned, whereas an English or French person would necessarily be light skinned. But actually, I think those definitions are related to what you said are a lot more flexible in the past, you could travel, you could go to a certain place if you immersed yourself in that culture started speaking the language where the clothing etc then you weren't disqualified from becoming a member of that culture because of the color of your skin some people might use that as a descriptor but

like i say it would be the same thing as being called blonde and actually that's the attitude you get from people in the ancient world they might talk about for example a black greek but when they're talking about that they're not saying black in order to be exclusive they're not saying because they're a black greek that doesn't mean they're not fully greek they're just describing exactly what the person looks like very physically it doesn't have the same kind of connotations it doesn't have that weight that we give it to nowadays now when we describe for example someone's being black there's a whole tale that comes

with it talking about you know the globalist history of the you know of the slave trade and colonialism and you know all the rest that sort of comes along with it but like you said you know you could go to certain places immerse yourself you know people are a lot more open to accepting who became a member of their society who was treated as a member of their society i mean again this is slightly later on or a lot later but i think it's important to mention in the context of you know the ancient world because it reflects the attitude that existed from the ancient world up until the modern world because it's really in the 19th century that our modern attitudes of race about africans being inherently inferior about people of different skin colors you know existing in different realms and having done so for ages

codifies into an ideology with a scientific basis. But what I wanted to mention was that in Russia in the 18th century, you have Gennibal Petrovich. He's like an African adopted son of, or he's given to Peter the Great as a gift. I think he comes from somewhere in sort of central, west central Africa. Peter the Great frees him and then adopts him as a son. And then he enters like the Russian military. So this is around in the 18th century

and he becomes a minor aristocrat. And I think his great grandson is, you know, Alexander Pushkin, who's like, you know, the Shakespeare of Russia. But the point is that, you know, he was in that society. He entered a profession there. He entered a specific class there. He married a Russian woman.

He had children who remained aristocrats. You know, he was the adopted son of Peter the Great. Where in that is this person, for example, has to remain a slave for life because they're african i mean you see the same thing again in britain around the same time where you have people like francis barbara and you know equiano who it is important to mention it's true start off um you know as enslaved africans but even america around that time which is these people aren't allowed to advance beyond a certain point and can't be fully included because of their heritage and particularly because they're African and that's a similar attitude when you look at the writings of the ancients is what exists in antiquity. I want to

place your strengths absolutely here Lou because as you've mentioned before you're a generalist where you're writing this huge book on the history of Africa. So it must be so interesting having that wide amount of knowledge from, as you mentioned, the 19th century, all the way back to, let's say, Kushite interaction. Yeah, exactly. To look at how attitudes develop over those centuries of history, looking for similarities, looking for differences, and analysing and bringing those differences

and highlighting it and writing it on paper. Yes, I see myself as a generalist. I'm working on this book, Motherland, which covers a period of 500,000 years of African history, which is coming out in a couple of years. But my background is in anthropology. So what's always fascinated me is using history, more importantly, to tell the stories of individuals. I think that's the great thing about humanities is that you can use qualitative evidence, you know, and everything doesn't need to be statistics. Actually, you can look at just the lives of individuals I mentioned. You know, Armani Reynos, I mentioned Alessandro de' Medici or Gannibal Petrovic and be like, actually, this reflects something very interesting about the way these people were treated in society. Actually, you can extrapolate from that to get a general

sense of how people's attitudes were at that time. But comparing attitudes, when you look at it, when you take a millennia or a couple of millennia long view, not only can you see, for example, the similarities between what's happening in the medieval and early modern and slightly later worlds, and then what's happening in the ancient world. And then you know that those attitudes of the ancient world are being carried through, which is why it's valid, I think, to look at what's happening slightly later, for example, the medieval world, Alessandro de' Medici, and use that in an example to say that actually, not as is similar, but we can see how these attitudes have been maintained in Europe.

But you can see it's slightly changing as well, when the trade in enslaved Africans is kind of ramping up. But more importantly, you can see actually how quickly things turn in particular countries to negatively affect and negatively impact slaved Africans. How, for instance, you know, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, because the abolitionist movement, for example, in Britain is gaining ground and the West Indian planters see their properties and their profits under threat, how some of them spread anti-African propaganda in order to protect those, and then how some of them provide a scientific basis for that propaganda, and then how that influences later scientists who then take it one step further,

and then how that academic ideology then is adopted by people in politics or involved in statecraft who are then also involved in colonial projects and then how they employ that so you can sort of see it develop but it really begins i would say when it becomes a developed ideology is really in the 19th century because again even the 18th century there are people who are sharing those ideas but it's really not mainstream, is the interesting thing. And then you can compare that actually to what's happened in ancient world. And then you can look at the factors or features that led to that being developed. And then you say to yourself, okay, it's, you know, obviously, there are dynamics, for example, like the trade enslaved peoples. But sometimes it's not just that, like I mentioned,

America's, it's not the fact that Africans are being enslaved and's it's not the fact that africans are being enslaved and traded it's the fact that the enslaved population in america's is majority african that's the key if it remained mixed i don't think an ideology which specifically targets africans and labels africans as being inherently inferior would have developed if for example when sort of the plantation economies was becoming an important feature of early american society initially in order to work those so for example tobacco is very labor intensive and then obviously the caribbean as well sugar is very labor intensive you know initially the plan is to use native americans but they're dying in droves you can't use white indentured servants because they sign contracts where after a while they're freed

native americans like i said are dying mainly because they're not resistant to old world diseases, but Africans are because, you know, they come from the old world. So then they become the workforce that ends up taking over or that ends up becoming, you know, the majority in the American societies. And then in order to control them, you have laws that are put in place in order to control a majority, quote unquote, black African workforce. And then these are necessarily targeting skin colour. And it kind of just develops like that. But what's important to remember, and I think, you know, it's great to speak today, for example, is to share the knowledge that actually that's a relatively recent development.

And it's something that happens in one part of the world. And it has spread, but it wasn't always like that. One other thing I'd love to highlight talk a bit about the romans but septimius severus oh yeah of course yeah no that's that is a very good point i mean you know it's interesting actually because we make i think today a much bigger deal of the fact that he's african than the romans would have you know when we talk about him today the documentary is done about him and it's like oh my goodness there was an african emperor imagine he speaks around they'll be like so yeah it's good to show that actually you know there were no

ethnic skin color barriers to reaching that kind of level if you did you did but the fact that the ancestries of roman emperors or roman elites was different because you know skin color wasn't a huge feature of their society was citizen versus barbarian was the big divide if you're a roman citizen you're treated a certain way, you know, you had certain privileges. Otherwise, the outsiders

or those who were the other were, you know, the non-Romans, the non-Selais Romans, the barbarians. Other than that, you know,

whether it was, you know, skin colour, ancestry, etc., not something that was paid attention to or given lip service to. It's so interesting. And also, I think, Septimius Severus's

biggest rival, Clodius Albinus, also came fromrica oh wow i mean yeah exactly i think i remember from our last chat a long time ago now yes but you mentioned that the sons of wealthy cushite families also went to rome exactly yeah in rome yeah yeah roman citizen as you say it's not to do with skin color it was if you're a roman if you're a roman yeah exactly so elite cushites sent their children to be educated in those states. You also mentioned earlier the client kingdoms when Romans would install, for example, people from the culture that they'd conquered to rule that place. It's a similar thing that they did with the Kushites as well, which was part of the reason why then.

then the Kushites who they installed as client kings for example after they'd conquered a part of northern Kush then sent their children you know to learn some of the language and customs and then also joined the military as well the Roman military in order to learn you know different techniques which would then also be useful when they came back and became officers and and highly valued auxiliary troops I'm guessing from non-Roman exactly who then serve in the Roman exactly exactly so i mean you have all this interconnection this mixing i mean there was prejudice but the fact that it wasn't you know skin color prejudice or racial prejudice and when i say race i mean you know ancestry the fact that this person has ancestors of dark-skinned africans is not something that barred people from

enjoying certain rights and privileges that's something that changes later people from enjoying certain rights and privileges. That's something that changes later on in the human story. It's been absolutely fascinating. You've got the Kushite pharaohs, you've got Septimius Severus, and so many others as well, don't you think? I mean, this has been great. Is there anything in regards to this topic you'd also like to mention to highlight before we completely wrap up this episode? For anybody who's interested in, you know, looking more into this topic, I highly recommend Frank Snowden's

Before Colour Prejudice. You know, it's not a narrative that we're sort of taught and, you know, with which we're familiar, especially in Britain, you know, where we are now, where there is a lot of tension. And what I would like to impart on the ancient listeners is to remember that the ideas that we have now, the ideologies and perceptions we have

now, a lot of them come about a lot later than, you know, we think they do. Just because we have them now doesn't mean we've always had them. And, you know, it's important to realize that a lot of these things, for example, are arbitrary, you know, they change and that peoples of the ancient medieval worlds might have actually had in a lot of ways, more progressive views in certain aspects that we do. so I think it's important to remember although we've made great strides for example with something like skin colour prejudice and this is important to remember that societies can regress in terms of certain attitudes and in terms of certain behaviours you know history isn't always a straight line of

continuous progress it's important to look also back at what forebears thought and incorporate some of those ideas and ideologies which are a lot more open minded and a lot more progressive even compared to today into our

current ideologies oh buddy this has been great my mind is still going like Queen of Sheba or Alexander Romance yeah exactly Alexander Romance

is great isn't it that's another one exactly because he goes to Kush again was it Meriwi in the legendary story yeah I mean also something that's also Meriwi in the legendary story?

Yeah, I mean, also something that's also mentioned, for example, in the manuscripts of Marley, the romance, and I think if I remember correctly, even tries to write their own version. So there is all this interaction. There's no protectionism when it comes to cultures and race. It's all sort of refreshingly open, which is not the idea we always have of our ancestors,

and especially the ancient world as well. So I think that's key to remember. Brilliant. Well, Luke, let's wrap it up there. This has been a great chat. Great to have you back on the pod. And thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the pod. Thank you so much, Tristan. It was a pleasure. Well, there you go. There was Luke Pepperer talking about race in antiquity.

I hope you enjoyed the episode. Just one thing for me today as i got to dash and keep going down to the south coast if you'd be kind enough to leave us a lovely racing on apple podcasts on spotify wherever you get your podcast from we the whole team we greatly appreciate it as we continue our mission to share these incredible stories from our distant past with you we also have a special code on at history hit for you ancients listeners today you can get a significant discount for your first three months 50 off your first three months if i remember correctly if you use code ancients when you sign up to history hit today so check that

one out too you get access to our library of podcasts not just the ancients or the other podcasts and all of our documentary material we release two new documentaries each week we're getting bigger we're getting better we're getting stronger all the time so do check out history hit use code ancients to have a peruse when and if you feel like it but that's enough from me and I'll see you in the next episode