Post #1511244
2026-01-27 16:09 UTC
Define "plenty".
The ancient Greeks didn't care about skin tone in the modern sense, so there isn't some racial census data like we have now.
https://lucas.leeds.ac.uk/article/skin-colour-in-ancient-greece/
They make trivial to find references to black people and depict them in the manner they depict themselves in art.
Because their division was not "Greek" and "black" but "Greek" and "not Greek", they simply didn't document it.
Aristotle describes the ideal skin tone as halfway between an Ethiopian and a woman.
Black people were quite literally unremarkable to them, so it's pretty easy to argue that an ancient Greek wouldn't find it odd to travel with a black person.
Replies (1)
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@Saapas@piefed.zip 2026-01-27 16:21
I think I'd like the person who made the claim to tell us what they meant with "plenty". A reference here and there to there having been a black person in Ancient Greece doesn't feel like it's proving the claim, but they might've meant just that when they said "plenty". > they simply didn’t document it That makes it sound hard to prove