Ethnic makeup of legionaries

[Anastasios Helios]

I'm done here. I've said all that I want to say....

[Centurion Crastinus]

Political correctness is absurd. People just need to have thicker skin.

[Chris1959]

Political Correctness is the foul art of forcing people into categories, fight it by treating all people for what they are, individuals with their own thoughts, feelings and opinions!

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

What would interest me more is: were there Romans in the Queen of Nubia's Royal Guard? We know that they had contact and the Romans at least one time tried to subdue Nubia / Kush / Ehtiopia.

And Hellenes in the Bantu kingdoms of the Niger area? They were in Baktria after all, why not in Africa-below-Sahara?

[Aemilius Paulus]

And Hellenes in the Bantu kingdoms of the Niger area? They were in Baktria after all, why not in Africa-below-Sahara?

There are no records of Hellenes going beyond Sahara. Even the Ancient Egyptians did not do that in their couple of thousand years of existence. The Phoenician admiral Hanno most likely reached what is now Gulf of Guinea and Mt. Cameroon, right by Nigeria (actually even farther than Nigeria, Mt Cameroon is in Cameroon). That is the farthest the Phoenicians probably ever sailed.

The farthest and the most unbelievable voyage of a Hellene, in my opinion was of the Massalian Greek named Pytheas. According to his account he rounded Spain, proving it was a peninsula, reached Brittany (modern-day France) and eventually the famed Tin Isles themselves, where he was greeted by Celts who showed him the tin mines. Pytheas then proceeded to reach the tip of moder-day Scotland and then sailing North until reaching Thule, which was most likely to be Iceland, according to Pytheas' description ("the ever-shining fire" of the "immense summit" - most likely the volcanoes of Iceland, since there are no active volcanoes on either the Shetland or Faroe Islands). Pytheas described the "midnight sun" as well as the peculiar sea sludge "neither jelly, nor water, nor earth" on which "one could neither walk nor sail" which is a type of ice sludge that forms only near the Poles. After reaching Iceland he sailed by the Scandinavia, near modern-day Norway and landed in Denmark, "the Amber Isle" too. From this point on he took pretty much the same way home. All of this time in 75-100 ton cargo trading ship. He left the "memoirs" of his voyage, titled "The Ocean" but unfortunately it did not survive to our times. His work was however widely quoted, so we are not entirely clueless. Pytheas' accounts were long dismissed as fanciful and false tall-tales until recently.

[Majd il-Romani]

The Phoenician admiral Hanno most likely reached what is now Gulf of Guinea and Mt. Cameroon, right by Nigeria (actually even farther than Nigeria, Mt Cameroon is in Cameroon). That is the farthest the Phoenicians probably ever sailed.

the Phonecians were actually the first ones to circumnavigate Africa.

and I don't think that blackfricans were recruited around Carthage and western North Africa, but I believe that maybe a few Nubians and Ethiopians would be found in a Legion recruited in Southern Egypt...

[Aemilius Paulus]

the Phonecians were actually the first ones to circumnavigate Africa.

Yeah, but that was under the Necho's II orders. Technically it was a Egyptian expedition. The Phoenicians did not do it themselves. They didn't seem to have any significant enough motivations to do so. Just like Vitus Bering was a Danish explorer who discovered Alaska but Russia got all the credit because Bering was at Russia's service at that time.

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

There are no records of Hellenes going beyond Sahara. Even the Ancient Egyptians did not do that in their couple of thousand years of existence. The Phoenician admiral Hanno most likely reached what is now Gulf of Guinea and Mt. Cameroon, right by Nigeria (actually even farther than Nigeria, Mt Cameroon is in Cameroon). That is the farthest the Phoenicians probably ever sailed.

The farthest and the most unbelievable voyage of a Hellene, in my opinion was of the Massalian Greek named Pytheas. According to his account he rounded Spian, proving it was a peninsula, reached Brittany (modern-day France) and eventually the famed Tin Isles themselves, where he was greeted by Celts who showed him the tin mines. Pytheas then proceeded to reach the tip of moder-day Scotland and then sailing North until reaching Thule, which was most likely to be Iceland, according to Pytheas' description ("the ever-shining fire" of the "immense summit" - most likely the volcanoes of Iceland, since there are no active volcanoes on either the Shetland or Faroe Islands). Pytheas described the "midnight sun" as well as the peculiar sea sludge "neither jelly, nor water, nor earth" on which "one could neither walk nor sail" which is a type of ice sludge that forms only near the Poles. After reaching Iceland he sailed by the Scandinavia, near modern-day Norway and landed in Denmark, "the Amber Isle" too. From this point on he took pretty much the same way home. All of this time in 75-100 ton cargo trading ship. He left the "memoirs" of his voyage, titled "The Ocean" but unfortunately it did not survive to our times. His work was however widely quoted, so we are not entirely clueless. Pytheas' accounts were long dismissed as fanciful and false tall-tales until recently.

Why was it thought to be fairytales? How can someone of ancient time make this up? I mean this is really scary stuff what he tells and I can't see how someone from Greece should invent the midnight sun...

Also wasn't there a Greek expedition which circumnavigated Africa and told after the return that they had been "so far south that the sun was in the north at midday"?

[Aemilius Paulus]

Why was it thought to be fairytales? How can someone of ancient time make this up? I mean this is really scary stuff what he tells and I can't see how someone from Greece should invent the midnight sun...

Also wasn't there a Greek expedition which circumnavigated Africa and told after the return that they had been "so far south that the sun was in the north at midday"?

Oh trust me, there were plenty of people making up wild stories about far-off lands in the times of Antiquity. Take Herodotus for example. He is my favorite historian and is probably the most accurate as well as the most objective one in all of Classical Greece. His accounts of Persia show virtually no bias against it. On the contrary, the praises them. However, just read his tales of India. Fairy Tales... he talks about various half-men, half-animals as well as other things. It was very common in the ancient times to make things up like that. Not only this, but the ice sludge seemed very odd to the Greek mariners who have seen water for their entire life and never as Pytheas described it. On the other hand, they have never been to India, and were well aware that animals can be very different. They have also heard of half apes, half men living in Africa (gorillas found by Hanno as well as other Phoenicians expeditions), making the fanciful descriptions of Herodutus not so unlikely. The Greeks as well as the other ancient people believed that the Far North was eternally dark because it was almost always winter there, and during winter, the days grow shorter. That is why the Greeks and later the romans as well as Medieval historians did not believe Pytheas.

As for the Greek circumnavigation, I have not heard of Hellenes doing that, but nevertheless it is quite possible, especially during the Ptolemaic rule of Egypt. Since the Phoenicians ad tight control over the Herculean Pillars (Gibraltar), Greeks could no use it (Pytheas slipped by during on of the Punic Wars, second one I believe, when the Phoenician Qarthadastim were busy fighting the Romans), the Red - Mediterranean Sea canal would have been a likely route. When I said Hellenes going beyond Sahara, I meant by land. The Greek circumnavigation of Africa didn't teach the Greeks much about the dry part of Africa very much. That Hellenic expedition had little time to spend on land. They never ventured very far ashore.

[Michiel de Ruyter]

There are no records of Hellenes going beyond Sahara. Even the Ancient Egyptians did not do that in their couple of thousand years of existence. The Phoenician admiral Hanno most likely reached what is now Gulf of Guinea and Mt. Cameroon, right by Nigeria (actually even farther than Nigeria, Mt Cameroon is in Cameroon). That is the farthest the Phoenicians probably ever sailed.

I think there is the chance that the odd Greek trader sailed the Red Sea and up along the east coast of Africa. It is generally accepted that there was naval trade from via the Red Sea to India, and presumably the same (in smaller intensity) along the east coast of Africa (the land of Punt and IIRC the queen Sheba legends are located there). In fact it was much of this trade that Alexandria's wealth was based on, especially under the Ptolemies.
It has to be said though that to my knowledge the Red Sea was never intensively sailed by the Greeks themselves (unlike of course the Mediterranean), and there alwas was more of a fascination among the Greeks and Romans with the territories to the north (where all those relentless invading barbarians came from to rape and pillage in civilized Greek (and Roman) territory) and east than the territories to the south.

[Olaf The Great]

Wow, I did not know a Greek was the first one to (possibly) discover Iceland.

I just wish I lived in a time when Explorers still existed(Astronauts don't count) I would love to sail the seas, finding new places.