*Sighs tiredly* Okay. Let's do this. Why those examples?
Helen of Troy (actually of Sparta) was the daughter of a marriage between a Spartan (Greek) king - Tyndareus son of Oebalus and Gorgophone (Afro-Greek), daughter of Perseus (Greek) and Andromeda (Ethiopean) and an Aetolian woman - Princess/Queen Leda, in which the Spartan king got Cuckholded by Zeus. Leda's parentage and ancestry is all over the place, however one of the many possible parentages (the myths are all equally valid) is that she is daughter of Thestius of Pluron (in Aetolia) and Deidameia of Messenia (also in Aetolia), who was in turn daughter of Perieres (king of Messenia) and Gorgophone, daughter of Perseus (Greek) and Andromeda (of Ethiopia). Which means that according to some versions of the myths, Helen and Clytemnestra are mixed - mostly Greek, but still enough black to count.
Various Roman emperors: Ancient Rome was a trade hub and while the first group of Roman emperors - those born of old aristocratic families - were without a doubt 100% Italian, after people worked out they (and by they I mean the Praetorian Guard) could just assassinate an emperor and install their preferred general in his place? Well, Rome had this nifty thing where they avoided rebellions by never giving command to people from a region, and they had legions from all over their empire. Including Africa. So after being emperor became a game of biggest army and Praetorian guard rulette people of every ethnicity in the Roman empire (which stretched Europe, Africa, and Asia Minor) got to be emperor!
Septimus Severus: Speaking of Roman Emperors who may have been black. Septimus Severus was almost certainly mixed Libyan-Italian. His father Publius Septimius Geta was from a local family in Leptis Magna, a formerly Carthaginian city. Now. Carthage was a Phoenician colonial empire, but by the time Septimus lived there had been a lot of time for the Semetic-Phoenician population to intermingle with the local Libyan population. So while it's possible this family somehow was of only Phoenician ancestry, it's unlikely, especially with sources that say otherwise. Emperor Septimus' mother, meanwhile was Fulvia Pia - of one of the most illustrius families in Rome. Emperor Septimus was married to a Syrian woman and they had two sons Emperor Caracalla and Emperor Geta. A lot of people will tell you that the reason Geta's face is missing from ancient portraits is that "white people were trying to hide that he's black". This is bullshit conspiracy crack. Geta's face is missing from portrature because after he died, his brother Caracalla tried to have him removed from history. The (modern) term is Damnatio memoriae.
Dido: Did not exist. She was a propaganda character. The woman she was based on - the one who DID found Carthage? Elissa of Tyre. She was not black. She was not African. She was a fucking coloniser who fled from her Phoenician (Semetic - same ethno-linguistic group as Arabs, Arameans, Assyrians, Jews, Mandaeans, Samaritans and Amharic) kindgom in modern day Lebanon to steal and colonise part of modern Tunisia. And when a local king said hey, marry me and legitimise your rule in the area or I will conquer your new city? She killed herself.
Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator: Was a coloniser ruling over what was significantly racially segregated between the Maecedonian Greek ruling class (of which Cleopatra descended) and their native Egyptian subjects. The main push behind the idea of a black Cleopatra (one who would look nothing like the Cleopatra in all the images and texts describing her from her era) can be traced back to a guy named John Henrik Clarke, who repeatedly failed to correctly name members of Cleopatra's family, sited incorrect sources, straight up lied about sources (the Encyclopaedia Britannica has never claimed Cleopatra was black, Cleopatra is not in the New Testiment claiming to be black, etc) was a prominent afro-centerist. Which is a political movement/ view of history that started on the basis of fighting back against black people being written out of history (good) and quickly became "claim everyone important in history was secretly black and refuse any actual evidence" (it's been called euorcentrism in blackface for a reason and funnily enough it almost never celebrates actual black history and achievements, just tries to claim everyone else's as being that). In other words, the main push behind "Cleopatra was black" came from a guy in the 1890s who had a political axe to grind and wanted a figurehead - regardless of whether it was true or cultural appropriation. Moreover, since Rome had some anti-black racism and Augustus Caesar threw every believable accusation under the sun at Cleopatra: had she been black by way of being a black harem slave's bastard, we would never have heard the end of it in ancient texts. But she's never once accused of that.
In both Dido and Cleopatra's case, remember: if "she was queen of part of Africa" was enough to make someone black, then Victoria and Elizabeth were also black and if "born in africa" was enough to make someone black, the elongated muskrat would count.
Various Roman Emperors: You remember how I said that Roman Emperors could be of any ethnicity in the empire after the Praetorian Guard started shiskebabing emperors? Before that you had to be a Roman aristocrat from an old family - which meant ethnically Roman, which meant you either had olive skin, dark eyes, and dark hair if you had more Etruscan blood in you (Julius Caesar) or pale skinned blue-grey eyed and light brown haired if you had more Latin tribes blood in you (Augustus Caesar). There's a fucking reason we call having a nose with a prominent bridge and which looks curved or bent a Roman Nose. Incidentally, all portraiture of Cleopatra also shows her with this beak-like "aquiline"/Roman nose.
The Entirity of Rome: *sighs* This is back to the afrocentrism/racialised, usually racist propaganda again. No, Rome was not secretly a black paradise that the evil white univeristy professors covered up. No, northern African nations were not as dark as sub-saharan African peoples because the Sahara meant they traded more with European Mediterreanians and Arabs from Asia minor because yes, the Sahara was a desert in the times of Ancient Greece and Rome. It was not a beautiful freshwater sea. Every 20,000 years the Sahara switches from desert to savannah grassland and back because of the way the Earth moves. It was not an ocean that dried up. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling "there was once a perfect place for our superior race" but for black people instead of white. The real Ancient Rome was very much like modern London. Swap native population English for native population Italian and you've got the same setup; massive international port with a mix of people from all over its empire/former empire and the rest of the known world, but slight majority to native ethnic group. Fusion cuisine, merchants and travellers, those who chose to stay, those whose ancestors were forced to come, an average population that's Mediterreanan European but is massively mixed, Roman being in many ways more about your culture than your skintone. That's the real Rome. It was never all black or all white. It was briefly all olive and then they became a trade hub and started conquering people.
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