Black people in Ancient Roman history

History

Black people or "Aethiops" (a term widely used to describe Africans for the categorization depended on possession of the characteristics of black African hair, lips, and later nose). In contrast with some later European history they were not always slaves, actually most of the Romans’ slaves were white. Despite common misconception that early rabbinic literature is the origin of anti-black sentiment linking blackness with slavery, such a linkage never occurs in ancient Jewish literature but in the literatures of other peoples who actually enslaved African people.