#classical world

To conclude for today there should be a simple statement of a simple reality that is, of course, not quite so simple at all. Namely that there were Black Africans who would have been seen as fully civilized in the Legions of Emperor Hadrian, the same man whose expulsion of the Judeans would create the longer history that would see some of the Judeans' very distant descendants decide there's no statue of limitation on decolonization and reclaim the old lands after 1,700 years. The same Legions in the broader armed forces were also involved in a retooling of Roman power in the province of Britain, which leads to the reality that Black people are more British than the English.

And that in the eyes of the Romans these Black soldiers on the Limes between civilization and the unlovely barbarian hinterland were civilized where the blond blue-eyed trouser-clad Saxons and Angles and Jutes were not.

on Renaissance from The Literature Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained, James Canton