Black Hannibal?

[saxdude]

Octavian looks like a proper English schoolboy

Wasn't Augustus guilty of a massive propaganda push idealizing him to such extent that any portrail of him must be taken with an enormous grain of salt? Like a certain macedonian somebody?

[Roma_Victrix]

Wasn't Augustus guilty of a massive propaganda push idealizing him to such extent that any portrail of him must be taken with an enormous grain of salt? Like a certain macedonian somebody?

That's somewhat correct, in that you never really see an aged or elderly Augustus. However, the depictions we see of him in art supposedly genuinely reflect how he looked in his youth and just before becoming middle aged. Roman sculpted art of the Late Republican period was also highly realistic, often including warts and other ugly characteristics without censorship or flattery by the sculptor for his patron. The statues of Augustus break from this in certain ways, at least in terms of presenting him as a powerful figure if not divine. For instance, the Augustus of Prima Porta not only has him wearing a breastplate with the imperial propaganda of a Parthian emissary surrendering the stolen standards of Crassus to Augustus, but also a cupid yanking at his robes and riding a tiny dolphin. This alludes to the myth that the Julii family descended from Venus.

[bigdaddy1204]

...finally decided on the premise that Phoenicians were descendants of "Egyians Nubains" (sic), and that somehow this translate to Carthaginians "also" being black- the unstated presumption that said person considers anything from Africa should be considered black as well; the majority of his statements were more ranting about how he thinks most people depict such peoples as white.

What a strange belief system! Thanks for sharing.

Egyptians aren't "black" - just because they're on the continent of Africa doesn't mean they look the same as people from Uganda or Nigeria. Here's Egyptian actress Yasmine Sabri.



Difficult to see how she can be described as "black"...

[Condottiere 40K]

I got the impression of Octavian as a sickly, if prickly, youth.

I doubt he ever worked out, besides haunting the corridors of his palace incriminating Varus.

His representations would be idealizations, which probably was a necessity of state, compared to his predecessors, who could afford to be more authentic.

[daelin4]

LOL. This is going to be fun.

Great quote about how Carthage operated, but this doesn't explain why they would used (apparently denigrating?) terms like half breeds. Gabriel doesn't provide any context for this quoted term, so it remains to be seen whether this was used like a pejorative or merely his own invention to explain what libyphoenicians were (in the same page, Libyans who adopted Punic culture and habits. Whether that's contemptible by people like Hannibal, who himself seemed to have quite the Greek classical education, is another matter even if that was true.

And speaking of which, being the topic at hand, Hannibal being "black" still has the problem where the people who use the word never defines what it is.

What a strange belief system! Thanks for sharing.

Egyptians aren't "black" - just because they're on the continent of Africa doesn't mean they look the same as people from Uganda or Nigeria. Here's Egyptian actress Yasmine Sabri.

Difficult to see how she can be described as "black"...

Precisely my point: WTF do these people even mean when they say black? If the actress is considered black, well it's easier to say who isn't because that list would suddenly be very small.

At least the "official" US definition has it where the person in question has some measure of "sub-saharan African" ancestry. But using that definition is itself troublesome because one can still look pretty fair skinned and even lack the stereotypical facial features of black people.

Which also leads to a second problem: there's being black, and looking black. Under the right makeup and angle, Lena Horne would look very black and very white, and she's mixed of African Native and European.

Furthermore there is the troubling misconception whereby if you are something, you have to look it, and boy do you have to REALLY look it. Is Hannibal "black" simply because he looks like he may be? Or can he be black this entire time, but you'd never notice unless he says so and his features aren't obvious to this fact? And let's not forget that image is perceptive: my sister looks a lot like me, but many a time people assume she's of a particular ethic group that which we certainly are not. Meanwhile the same people would turn around and assume I'm something else.

The other interesting thing is that most people who claim Hannibal is black, often have this strange self-validating agenda. In the previous case, the guy clearly had a grudge against what he thinks is white dominance in media (ie white people playing as black characters).

[sumskilz]

The Livy source is 25.40.11-12, Canon Roberts translates it like this:

Then he was recalled by tidings of a mutiny which had broken out amongst the Numidians in Hanno's camp. Nearly three hundred of them had gone off to Heraclea Minoa. When he left the camp to reason with them and recall them, he is said to have most earnestly advised the generals not to engage the enemy in his absence. They both resented this; more especially Hanno who had long been jealous of Muttines' reputation. "Is Muttines," he exclaimed, "to dictate to me; a low-born African to give orders to a Carthaginian general bearing the commission of the senate and people?

Maybe someone can find the word in Latin. Although we could also ask what was Livy's source for specific dialog?

[LinusLinothorax]

Lol, this thread is still going on...

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

The Livy source is 25.40.11-12, Canon Roberts translates it like this:

Maybe someone can find the word in Latin. Although we could also ask what was Livy's source for specific dialog?

Legationes omnium ferme ciuitatium Siciliae ad eum conueniebant. dispar ut causa earum, ita condicio erat. qui ante captas Syracusas aut non desciuerant aut redierant in amicitiam ut socii fideles accepti cultique; quos metus post captas Syracusas dediderat ut uicti a uictore leges acceperunt. erant tamen haud paruae reliquiae belli circa Agrigentum Romanis, Epicydes et Hanno, duces reliqui prioris belli, et tertius nouus ab Hannibale in locum Hippocratis missus, Libyphoenicum generis Hippacritanus—Muttinen populares uocabant—, uir impiger et sub Hannibale magistro omnes belli artes edoctus. huic ab Epicyde et Hannone Numidae dati auxiliares, cum quibus ita peruagatus est hostium agros, ita socios ad retinendos in fide animos eorum ferendo in tempore cuique auxilium adiit, ut breui tempore totam Siciliam impleret nominis sui nec spes alia maior apud fauentes rebus Carthaginiensium esset. itaque inclusi ad <id> tempus moenibus Agrigenti dux Poenus Syracusanusque, non consilio Muttinis quam fiducia magis ausi egredi extra muros ad Himeram amnem posuerunt castra. quod ubi perlatum ad Marcellum est, extemplo copias mouit et ab hoste quattuor ferme milium interuallo consedit, quid agerent pararentue exspectaturus. sed nullum neque locum neque tempus cunctationi consilioue dedit Muttines, transgressus amnem ac stationibus hostium cum ingenti terrore ac tumultu inuectus. postero die prope iusto proelio compulit hostes intra munimenta. inde reuocatus seditione Numidarum in castris facta, cum trecenti ferme eorum Heracleam Minoam concessissent, ad mitigandos reuocandosque eos profectus magno opere monuisse duces dicitur ne absente se cum hoste manus consererent. id ambo aegre passi duces, magis Hanno, iam ante anxius gloria eius: Muttinem sibi modum facere, degenerem Afrum imperatori Carthaginiensi misso ab senatu populoque? is perpulit cunctantem Epicyden ut transgressi flumen in aciem exirent: nam si Muttinem opperirentur et secunda pugnae fortuna euenisset, haud dubie Muttinis gloriam fore.

[sumskilz]

Yeah degenerem, seems pretty clear. It could be translated with the cognate and work better I think, except that everyone would probably assume it meant degenerate in the moral sense instead of "less than one's ancestors".

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

degenerate African

[Marcus Aemilius Lepidus]

That's somewhat correct, in that you never really see an aged or elderly Augustus. However, the depictions we see of him in art supposedly genuinely reflect how he looked in his youth and just before becoming middle aged. Roman sculpted art of the Late Republican period was also highly realistic, often including warts and other ugly characteristics without censorship or flattery by the sculptor for his patron. The statues of Augustus break from this in certain ways, at least in terms of presenting him as a powerful figure if not divine. For instance, the Augustus of Prima Porta not only has him wearing a breastplate with the imperial propaganda of a Parthian emissary surrendering the stolen standards of Crassus to Augustus, but also a cupid yanking at his robes and riding a tiny dolphin. This alludes to the myth that the Julii family descended from Venus.

To be a bit annoying: We call the late republican portraits realistic, but just because they show more wrinkels etc. it doesn't mean realistic in sense of real. They definitly looked more like that, than idealistic heads of mainly hellenistic rulers, but it is still a form of art. It is the same with images of rulers on coins. There are types and each of them has an intention. In the late republic the convention maybe was to show potraits of man who suffer in the service of the republic, they decline in health and the wrinkles and all that show that in detail. Maybe they had all that, but maybe they looked better and got sculptures where they looked diffrent. High hellenistic sculpture had tiny heads compared to the body, while in the late first century AD we get those huge, fat heads from Nero to Galba to Domitian. If it were just the Flavians, i would say this is a characteristic of this family, but it starts earlier and is most likely a artistic convention, where those huge heads represent something good, otherwise it wouldn't have continued after Nero. The Prima Porta statue itself is a bit tricky because it is formaly a honourary statue because it has a breastplate. They are meant to stand in public, but as the name says it was found in a private house, imperial, but a private house and therefore is actually a bad example to interpred it as an honourary statue. Scholars do it anyway because it resemples other statues of him with breastplate which are in worse condition, like the one from Orange. It is an annoyning german tradition, but we have actually a good working methodology to work with statues and there is a big diffrence between private potraits and honourary statues in terms what the person who dedicated them had in mind.

To come back to the topic, i remember the cover of the Companion to the Hellinistic World by Ersekine and it shows the bust of a ptolemean king made of granit in pharaonic fashion.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

https://books.google.de/books/about/...sC&redir_esc=y

Does that mean he was black or egyptian?

[Condottiere 40K]

I'd fire my profiler.

[Roma_Victrix]

I'd fire my profiler.

Excellent comeback. It's also a great example of how Hellenistic/Greco-Roman realism in artwork can be found even in numismatics and antique coinage. Cleopatra VII of Ptolemaic Egypt is also a good example as to why we shouldn't practice incest, kids. You get a face like that! That and potential mental issues. She must have been a complete charmer personality-wise to lure in Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, if not for the reason that she had a lot of money and control of much of Rome's grain supply by virtue of holding Egypt. To make it relevant to this thread, with a nose like that, it's also another reason to dispel the silly notion about a black sub-Saharan Cleopatra.

To be a bit annoying: We call the late republican portraits realistic, but just because they show more wrinkels etc. it doesn't mean realistic in sense of real. They definitly looked more like that, than idealistic heads of mainly hellenistic rulers, but it is still a form of art. It is the same with images of rulers on coins. There are types and each of them has an intention. In the late republic the convention maybe was to show potraits of man who suffer in the service of the republic, they decline in health and the wrinkles and all that show that in detail. Maybe they had all that, but maybe they looked better and got sculptures where they looked diffrent. High hellenistic sculpture had tiny heads compared to the body, while in the late first century AD we get those huge, fat heads from Nero to Galba to Domitian. If it were just the Flavians, i would say this is a characteristic of this family, but it starts earlier and is most likely a artistic convention, where those huge heads represent something good, otherwise it wouldn't have continued after Nero. The Prima Porta statue itself is a bit tricky because it is formaly a honourary statue because it has a breastplate. They are meant to stand in public, but as the name says it was found in a private house, imperial, but a private house and therefore is actually a bad example to interpred it as an honourary statue. Scholars do it anyway because it resemples other statues of him with breastplate which are in worse condition, like the one from Orange. It is an annoyning german tradition, but we have actually a good working methodology to work with statues and there is a big diffrence between private potraits and honourary statues in terms what the person who dedicated them had in mind.

I don't necessarily disagree with any of this and it's a good summary of how the different traditions of portraiture in the Greco-Roman world produced varying levels of realism and authenticity (wrinkles and all) according to the preferences of the patron or even the artistic tropes/trends of the day. However, I think you're failing to see the forest for the trees here, so to speak. For instance, your Egyptian comparison:

To come back to the topic, i remember the cover of the Companion to the Hellinistic World by Ersekine and it shows the bust of a ptolemean king made of granit in pharaonic fashion.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

https://books.google.de/books/about/...sC&redir_esc=y

Does that mean he was black or egyptian?

I feel as though this isn't an apt comparison, though. Greco-Roman artwork achieved a far higher degree of realism than the rather static native Egyptian artwork (minus perhaps later traditions like the Roman-era Fayum mummy portraits). This is especially the case when considering Egyptian royal iconography, which was not just meant to flatter the ruler but present him as a flawless living god. You mentioned how Hellenistic Greek portraits portray an idealized vision of Diaodochi and the successor kings of Alexander, yet this absolutely pales in comparison to the highly idealized portraits of the Egyptian pharaohs. For that matter, there was virtually no artwork before Classical Greece that achieved the same standards of realism. This is as true in Achaemenid Persia as it was in far more distant countries like Qin and Han China, where statuary suddenly becomes far more realistic with the Terracotta Warriors of Qin Shi Huangdi's tomb built c. 210 BC. Ultra-realism in Asian art was also informed by Hellenistic standards, a good example being early Parthian artwork (much of which was later neglected in favor of conventions like Parthian frontality in sculpted and painted portraiture). For ancient India, the fusion of Greco-Buddhist artwork springs to mind.

In other words, statues of Augustus might present a slightly idealized version of him for the sake of imperial propaganda, but his facial features aren't radically different from how he would have actually appeared in his youth. I was also merely using him as an example of how Romans generally appeared in terms of facial features. I wasn't trying to form a cogent argument that certain Roman statues were more idealistic than others.