The Color Line: a History: The Story of Europe and the African, from the Old World to the New

By Ethan Malveaux

My book, The Color Line: A History, is about how the ethnic biases of the European of Ancient Rome morphed into the racial prejudice of modern times through a process that was centuries in the making. From the collapse of Ancient Rome to the rise of Christendom, then to the discovery of the American continents through to the landmark Supreme Court decision of Plessy v. Ferguson, I will take the reader on a journey that will shatter preconceived notions of European and African relations. The narrative strain of my comprehensive composition seeks to historically follow the advent of the color classifications of white and black by using primary and secondary sources to explain this social and psychological concept which still influences our world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503527577

Ethan Malveaux

Ethan Malveaux was born in Teaneck, New Jersey but educated in New York. After attending private schools, including Fordham Preparatory School, he received a BA in Political Science from Fordham University. Along the way he was selected to be a part of the exclusive New York District Attorney’s Internship Program at the age of sixteen. He has also interned for a United States Congressman. Mr. Malveaux gave up all other commitments to write this book. He currently lives in New Jersey.

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Copyright © 2015 by Ethan Malveaux.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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All biblical quotations and phrases are either from The Harper Collins 1993 study Bible or the 1952 Duoay-Challoner biblical text.

Rev. date: 01/06/2015

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CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

BOOK I: ROME AND HER DECLINE

CHAPTER I: ROME AND ITS VALUES

I. THE TRUE PLACE OF ROME IN HISTORY

II. THE ROMAN ATTITUDES TOWARD SLAVERY

III. THE IMPACT OF CLEOPATRA AND HER RELATIONSHIP WITH ROME AND HER LEADERS

IV. THE TWILIGHT OF ROMAN CIVILIZATION

CHAPTER II: THE ORIGINS OF CHRISTIANITY

I. THE ETHNIC DIVERSITY OF ROME

II. THE POLITICAL TURMOIL OF PALESTINE

III. JESUS OF NAZARETH

IV. THE MINISTRY OF CHRIST

V. THE EXECUTION OF CHRIST

VI. THE APOSTOLIC MISSION

VII. THE PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANITY AND MARTYRDOM OF ITS LEADERS

VIII. AFRICAN LEADERSHIP OF THE EARLY LATIN CHURCH

BOOK II: THE BEGINNINGS OF EUROPE

CHAPTER III: THE STRUGGLE FOR A NEW IDENTITY AND UNIFICATION

I. THE ROLE OF THE LATIN CHURCH AFTER THE COLLAPSE OF ROME

II. THE CHRISTIAN IMAGES AND ITS REFLECTION OF THE ORIGINS OF THE FAITH

CHAPTER IV: THE FOUNDING OF ISLAM

I. THE PROPHET MOHAMMED AND THE ORIGINS OF ISLAM

CHAPTER V: ISLAMDOM’S EMPIRE

I. THE BATTLE FOR THE CALIPHATE

II. THE EMPIRE OF ISLAMDOM AND THE THREAT TO CHRISTENDOM

CHAPTER VI: THE BATTLE FOR EUROPE

I. THE WAR OF RELIGIONS

II. THE TRIUMPHS AND TRAGEDIES OF THE CALIPHATE

III. THE RISE OF THE CAROLINGIANS

IV. THE CREATION OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE

CHAPTER VII: THE MOORS OF THE ITALIAN PENINSULA

I. THE STRUGGLE FOR SICILY

II. THE MOORS INVADE ITALY

III: THE MOORISH EMIRATE DYNASTIES OF SICILY

BOOK III: THE AGE OF LATIN SUPREMACY

CHAPTER VIII: THE IMPLEMENTATION OF FEUDALISM

I. EUROPE IN CRISIS

II. THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER

III. THE LORDS AND KINGS

CHAPTER IX: THE REFORM OF THE CHURCH

I. THE CHURCH IN CRISIS

II. THE AGE OF CLERICAL RENEWAL

CHAPTER X: THE CRUSADES

I. THE CALL TO ARMS

II. THE DEFEAT OF THE MUSLIMS

III. LATIN SUPREMACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST

IV. THE SECOND CRUSADE

V. SALADIN

VI. LATIN SUPREMACY AND THE JEWS

BOOK IV: ATAVISM, THE MOORS, AND THE RENAISSANCE

CHAPTER XI: THE DECLINE OF LATIN SUPREMACY IN ITALY

I. THE RISE OF ITALY AND COLLAPSE OF FEUDALISM

II. SOUTHERN ITALY AND THE HOUSE OF ARAGON

III. THE RISE OF THE SFORZAS

IV. THE RETURN OF PAGAN SLAVERY

CHAPTER XII: THE MEDICI

I. THE FIRST GENERATIONS OF THE MEDICI

II. ALESSANDRO DE MEDICI AND THE MAKING OF A FLORENTINE DUKE

III. DUKE ALESSANDRO

CHAPTER XIII: COSIMO DE MEDICI AND HIS DESCENDANTS

I. THE UNEXPECTED BABY

II. Il Virago

III. THE LAST CONDOTTIERE

IV. COSIMO I

V. MARIE DE MEDICI

VI. A TALE OF TWO CROWNS

VII. THE LAST OF THE MEDICI

CHAPTER XIV: THE AFRICAN IN RENAISSANCE ART

I. THE SECONDARY ROLE

BOOK V: THE PROTESTANT AND ENGLISH REVOLT

CHAPTER XV: LUTHER AND HIS REVOLUTION

I. THE TWILIGHT OF LATIN SUPREMACY

II. LUTHER

III. LUTHER AS MORAL AND POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR

CHAPTER XVI: ENGLAND BECOMES A CONTINENTAL POWER

I. ENGLAND BECOMES CIVILIZED

II. THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CROWN

III. HENRY VIII AND HIS SUBJECTS

IV. HENRY BREAKS WITH ROME

V. HENRY SUPREME

CHAPTER XVII: THE RISE OF ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND

I. THE RETURN OF CIVIL STRIFE

II. THE BLOODY QUEEN

CHAPTER XVIII: THE ELIZABETHAN AGE

I. THE QUEEN HERSELF

II. THE STOMACH OF A KING

III. ELIZABETH AND AFRICAN SLAVERY

IV. ELIZABETHAN NADIR

CHAPTER XIX: SHAKESPEARE AND THE AFRICAN

I. THE PLAYWRIGHT

II. THE MOOR OF VENICE

III. THE PLAY OTHELLO AND ITS SOCIETAL INFLUENCE

BOOK VI: THE RISE OF WHITE LATIN SUPREMACY

CHAPTER XX: THE KINGDOMS OF IBERIA

I. THE RIVALRY OF ETHNICITY AND RELIGION

II. THE PORTUGUESE STATE ARISES

III. PORTUGAL DISCOVERS AFRICA

CHAPTER XXI: AFRICAN CIVILIZATION AT THE TIME OF EUROPEAN DISCOVERY

I. THE WEST AFRICAN KINGDOMS

II. THE ZENITH AND DECLINE OF THE MALI EMPIRE

III. THE PORTUGUESE ESTABLISH PERMANENT SLAVE TRADE WITH WEST AFRICA

CHAPTER XXII: SPAIN ENTERS THE AGE OF DISCOVERY

I. CASTILE AND ITS NEIGHBORS

II. THE WOMAN WHO WOULD BE QUEEN

III. ONE LAND, ONE FAITH, ONE RACE

CHAPTER XXIII: SPAIN DISCOVERS A NEW WORLD

I. CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

II. 1492: THE BEGINNING OF THE HISPANIC AGE

III. THE VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY

IV. WAR AND SLAVERY

BOOK VII: SPAIN BUILDS AN EMPIRE

CHAPTER XXIV: THE DECLINE OF COLUMBUS

I. COLUMBUS AND COLONIZATION

II. COLUMBUS AND SLAVERY

III. COLUMBUS THE CONQUEROR

IV. TWILIGHT OF AN ADVENTURER

CHAPTER XXV: RACE AND THE INQUISITION

I. THE RISE OF RACIAL BIAS IN SPAIN

II. THE MORISCOS DILEMMA

III. THE LATIN COLOR LINE

CHAPTER XXVI: THE SUBJUGATION OF THE AMERICAS TO SPANISH CIVILIZATION

I. THE METHOD OF COLONIZATION

II. THE CONQUISTADOR

III. CORTÉS AND THE AZTEC EMPIRE

IV. THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO

V. PIZARRO AND THE INCA EMPIRE

VI. THE CONQUEST OF PERU

CHAPTER XXVII: THE POLITICAL EDIFICE AND SLAVERY

I. THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT ASSUMES CONTROL OF THE EMPIRE

II. THE MORAL JUSTIFICATION OF SLAVERY

III. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND AFRICAN SLAVERY

IV. THE MORAL JUSTIFICATION FOR AFRICAN SLAVERY

V. POPE PAUL III AND OTHER PAPAL STANCES ON SLAVERY

CHAPTER XXVIII: INDIAN SLAVERY IN THE SPANISH COLONIES

I. THE INDIES

II. THE INDIAN SLAVE

III. THE ENCOMENDEROS

IV. BARTOLOMÉ LAS CASAS

CHAPTER XXIX: THE RISE OF AFRICAN SLAVERY IN THE INDIES

I. THE NEED FOR DURABLE AND FREE LABOR

II. THE COMMERCE IN AFRICANS

CHAPTER XXX: THE SUPPLY SIDE OF THE SLAVE TRADE

I. THE EUROPEAN AND AFRICAN RELATIONS

II. PORTUGAL AND THE AFRICAN KINGDOMS

III. SÃO TOMÉ AND THE DECLINE OF KONGO

IV. THE COLLAPSE OF KONGO AND THE RISE OF DAHOMEY

BOOK VIII: WHITE SUPREMACY IN SOUTH AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

CHAPTER XXXI: THE COLOR LINE OF LATIN AMERICA

I. THE DIVISION OF THE RACES

II. THE LABORS OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE

III. AFRICAN SLAVERY IN URBAN SETTINGS

IV. THE SPANISH AMERICAN PLANTATION SYSTEM

CHAPTER XXXII: CUBA

I. THE COLONIZATION OF THE ISLAND

II. BLACK SLAVERY, INGENIOS, AND THE COLOR LINE

III. THE ABOLITION OF CUBAN SLAVERY

CHAPTER XXXIII: THE UNIQUE AND EXOTIC COLOR LINE OF BRAZIL

I. THE MYTH OF COLOR

II. THE COLOR CASTE OF BRAZIL

III. BRAZIL’S QUILOMBOS AND AFRICAN RITUALS

IV. INTERRACIAL PASSION AND DEBAUCHERY IN BRAZIL

V. POLITICAL UPHEAVAL AND RACE IN BRAZIL

VI. EMANCIPATION COMES TO BRAZIL

CHAPTER XXXIV: ST. DOMINGUE AND JAMAICA

I. THE FRENCH SETTLEMENT ON HISPANIOLA

II. THE SLAVE REVOLT

III. L’OUVERTURE’S REGIME AND HAITIAN INDEPENDENCE

IV. THE ENGLISH FOUND A SETTLEMENT IN JAMAICA

V. THE JAMAICAN SLAVE SOCIETY

VI. EMANCIPATION

BOOK IX: THE COLOR LINE OF WHITE ANGLO SUPREMACY

CHAPTER XXXV: ENGLAND AND THE NETHERLANDS UNDERGO ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND RELIGIOUS CHANGES

I. NORTHERN EUROPE BREAKS WITH THE SOUTH

II. THE ENGLISH AND THE DUTCH DEVELOP A COLOR LINE

CHAPTER XXXVI: THE ENGLISH AND DUTCH SETTLEMENT OF NORTH AMERICA

I. EARLY EXPLORATION ALONG NORTHERN ATLANTIC SHORES

II. ROANOKE AND JAMESTOWN

III. JAMESTOWN MAKES WAR AND ADOPTS SLAVERY

IV. COLONIAL VIRGINIA, INDENTURED SERVITUDE, AND SLAVERY

V. OTHER COLONIES OF NORTHWARD EXPANSION

VI. THE DUTCH COLONY OF NEW AMSTERDAM BECOMES NEW YORK

VII. OTHER BRITISH COLONIES OF NORTH AMERICA

CHAPTER XXXVII: THE AMERICAN COLOR LINE UNDER THE NEW SOCIETY OF THE REPUBLIC

I. THE CONSTRUCT OF RACIAL SEPARATION

II. THE AMERICAN COLOR LINE

III. THE AFRICAN AND THE FOUNDING DOCUMENTS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC

XXXVIII: WHITE ANGLO SUPREMACY IN THE FIRST HUNDRED YEARS OF THE REPUBLIC

I. THE IMPACT OF THE COLOR LINE ON THE CUSTOMS AND VALUES OF AMERICANS

II. THE INFLUENCE OF SOME PROMINENT AMERICAN PRESIDENTS ON THE RACIAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE COLOR LINE

CHAPTER XXXIX: THE SUPREME COURT REAFFIRMS THE COLOR LINE

I. THE PRECARIOUS LEGAL POSITION OF BLACKS

II. LOUISIANA UNDER WHITE LATIN SUPREMACY

III. PLESSY v. FERGUSON AND ITS EFFECT ON THE COLOR LINE

IV. THE PROBLEM OF A NEW CENTURY

APPENDIX

NOTES

Endnotes

For my grandparents:

ETHEL BOBO and JAMES PITTS

and my adopted grandparents:

VINCENT and WIVINA MALVEAUX

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have been started nor completed without the constant support and encouragement of my mother. I would also like to thank the staffs at the New York Public Library and the Schomburg branch of the library for directing me to the proper resources relevant to my research. In addition, I would like to express my gratitude to the staffs of both Alabaster Bookshop and the world-famous Strand Bookstore for keeping their shelves stacked with not only out-of-print rare books but crucial nineteenth and early twentieth-century publications. Joseph Martin also deserves to be thanked for convincing me that self-publishing was the correct avenue to go down in order to bring this manuscript to the world.

Another debt of gratitude must be conveyed toward those who have given assistance in the obtaining of permission for use of the numerous pictures without which this book would not be as illuminating. I must thank Ms. Kerry Gaertner and the Metropolitan of Museum of Art board of portrait approval for allowing me to use Preti’s masterpiece on the cover–––which I think pictorial illustrates for the onlooker the subject matter that is the content of the book’s pages. Also, my thanks goes to Ms. Aimee L. Marshall of the Art Institute of Chicago who helped me obtain another masterpiece for the book’s interior pages. Andrew Leshak of Super Stock Photos I think turned out to be the man with the inside plan by giving me access to portraits I thought were not within my budget to obtain. To round out my gratitude, I must thank my ancestors to whom this book I feel must have been their inspiration.

BOOK I

ROME AND HER DECLINE

CHAPTER I

ROME AND ITS VALUES

I. THE TRUE PLACE OF ROME IN HISTORY

Just as with most things in the West, the story of European supremacy and the forging of a civilization and psychology that would come to dominate the lives of Africans—as well as other non-Europeans—began in Ancient Rome. For our purposes, it is only necessary to look at those aspects of this Mediterranean superpower that Europeans use in order to support the dominance of European antiquity over the world the Romans inhabited and the role of the African populace who were the inhabitants of this legendary state, which was for its time the most multiracial composite in Europe.

Students of Ancient Roman history know the Roman Empire continues to be cited by Europeans as being the most powerful empire ever known to mankind. Never has humanity, or the world for that matter, seen a government encompass so much hegemony militarily while making such a impression on the global culture at least compared to the Europe of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Even an American president exclaimed while talking to an audience about the role of the United States of America’s superpower status in the present world, We have never seen the likes of our situation ever since the days of the Roman Empire. So pervasive is this sentiment that when people are educated about the history of the world (as part the curriculum of Western education) how often will history professors exclaim, The Roman Empire ruled the world! Add to this the countless television documentaries that have reinforced this view point on the reputable channels devoted to historical instruction.

However, such characterizations of Rome and its empire are wrong. The Mayans, as well as other aboriginal nations of the America’s central and southern hemisphere, never saw a Roman standard much less were under one. Nor were the native tribesmen of the Caribbean or the northern continent of America aware of the European power. In fact, the first Europeans the Native tribesmen of the America’s came into contact with, according to recent anthropological study, were the not-so-civilized Norsemen of northern Europe. They were followed by the Spanish, under the leadership of Christopher Columbus. Columbus only stumbled upon the continent by happenstance on his way to the Indies or Asian continent (this fateful encounter between the Europeans and indigenous people of the Americas will be discussed later).

Also, the indigenous people of sub-Saharan Africa never encountered the Roman standard to the same magnitude they would have been acquainted with some of the more ancient empires situated on the Northern African continent: The New Kingdom period of Ancient Egypt established a trade route below the sub-Sahara to the place called Punt (presumably on the eastern coast of Africa) under the eighteenth dynasty in the reign of the first female Pharaoh Hatshepsut. But for the most part, the indigenous Africans of the Bush, as they are now so-called, had very little knowledge of any civilization beyond the African continent during this period of human history.

From the Eastern standpoint, the Roman Empire was only able to control the periphery of Asia Minor, not even going past the Tigris, as Alexander the Great’s Hellenic Empire had done—in fact, not even reaching it—therefore, leaving everything west of the Tigris River free of Roman annexation. The primary way the Asian contemporaries of Rome would have come into contact with the Mediterranean empire was through commerce via the trade routes, where goods and culture could be exchanged. Although from time to time military expeditions would try to subjugate Asia Minor as a whole under Roman rule, their military campaigns ended with either heavy losses or stalemates. Romans became fatigued with threats from within the territory they controlled, even from the capital itself, as well as from without (i.e., the constant onslaught of the German barbarians to the north), and were forced to limit their ambitious pretensions to what they had. It would not be until the attack of the Huns, under the ruthless King Attila, that Asia would deal more directly with the Romans: mortally wounding the Roman illusion of invincibility by conquering Italy and almost sacking the capital (452).

As demonstrated by the history of human civilization at the time of Rome, it is quite clear Rome did not rule the world neither in the literal sense nor in the figurative but only the Mediterranean nexus of humanity, which was only half of what the Macedonian king, the great Alexander, brought under the sway of his iron scepter. The scepter of Rome, to the contrary, was not as far reaching nevertheless, given that up to AD sixteenth century the interpretation of most Europeans was the world was flat instead of round. The Romans had pride in controlling what to them must had been almost half of the earth and that the gods would bestow this favor on them, must have given them a well-deserved feeling of superiority.

Yet this superiority is twisted by the European today, in the generality, to mean the Roman Empire ruled the world as if they (the Romans) knew the world as we know it today, which, of course, is a profound error, although no one is denying the greatness of the Ancient Roman in the context of European antiquity. It would be ignorant to do as such. On the other hand, the point that has to be understood is the European continent or any civilization therein has never been global in the true sense of the word until the late fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries. When historians proclaim that, Rome ruled the world, it is a void statement meant to instill in young minds and reiterate in mature ones that the doctrine of White Supremacy is an ancient concept dating all the way back to the time of antiquity. While it is true we in the present civilization of the West owe much to the Ancient Romans whether it be in politics, law, and culture, we are not to understand the Romans as being the unconquerable masters of the earth. Likewise, we are not to understand them as being the authors of the European definition of ‘whiteness.’

Hopefully, the exaggerated hyperbole of the superpower of the ancient Mediterranean that Europeans like to browbeat non-Europeans with has been effectively dispelled so that now this work can properly examine the actual influence that Rome had on the European identity and how it handled the diversity of ethnicities and cultures from within the Latin framework it constructed to unify it. Though always under some threat of turmoil from within, the imperial Roman government, both under the republic as well as the principate, was able to keep the Mediterranean world stitched together under the uniformity of one law and one rule. It also incorporated from these cultures, that it dominated, what it liked. The emperors especially made way for foreign customs not originating from the Roman or Etruscan civilizations that preceded the republican establishment. For example, the African /Asiatic custom of worshipping their monarch as a living deity.

Edward Gibbon, in his voluminous scholarly work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, makes the remark, the deification of the emperors is the only instance in which the Roman departed from their accustomed prudence and modesty.¹ This is an inaccuracy, however, because while the emperors along with the patrician class of the Roman society of that time proclaimed the core values of their Roman culture, they lost themselves in the excesses of the more ancient Oriental ones. Even before the collapse of the republic, it was becoming apparent the multiculturalism clustered in the capital city of the powerful state was eating away at the society.

African and Oriental customs so permeated the last years of the Republic that it became fashionable for the elites of Roman society to live like African and Oriental potentates:

Lawyers like Cicero and Hortensius…. competed in palaces as well as in oratory; the gardens of Hortensius contained the largest zoological collection in Italy. All men of any pretension had villas at or near Baiae, where the aristocracy took the baths…. and declared a moratorium on monogamy.²

Just as Alexander the Great and the Ptolemies before, the Patricians were too succumbing to the temptations of the luxurious lifestyles found in the non-European countries to which they aspired to rule to the south and east of Italy. Marcus Licinius Crassus, who put down the rebellion of slaves led by Spartacus (71 BC) and who was the consul of Rome twice, heartily accepted the governorship of the rich country of Syria and then greedily tried to crush Parthia.¹ Also the licentious Mark Antony scandalized both Caesar and Roman protocol by keeping an Eastern=style harem of both women and boys in Rome itself. Later, as the ruler of the eastern half of the Roman Empire, Mark Antony would immerse himself, with relish, in the splendor and extravagance of the Eastern culture culminating in his affair with the half-African and half-Greek Egyptian queen Cleopatra.

Therefore, the worship of the Roman Emperors is not the length and breadth of the excess within the Roman culture, which had its genesis in the southeastern part of the Empire as Edward Gibbon supposes. The noted classicist Edith Hamilton called Virgil’s Rome a place where virtue has all but perished and what little is left exists only to suffer where no one can sleep for thinking of a money loving daughter-in-law seduced, of bribes….of adulteresses not out of their term…and banquets celebrate unnatural and incestuous vice.³ Not even the symbol of all stoic virtue of that period Cato could not resist the charms of Eastern civilization: he was alleged to have paid 800,000 sesterces, a considerable sum, for some table spreads from Babylon.

This free fall into the excesses of the southeastern cultures would not be stemmed and supplanted until another system of beliefs originating from the southeastern part of the empire would take over the hearts and minds of the Roman people, namely, the religion of Christianity. It is one of the ironies of history, depending on the historian, that it would be another system of beliefs generating from the East (outside of the Greco-Roman school of religion and thought) that would restore the former luster of Roman modesty and prudence along with imperial uniformity and order. Again the acknowledgment of the decay of Roman civilization and European’s tendency to portray a facade of unmatched Roman superiority is virtually undermined by the turn to an inferior civilization in order to preserve the vestige of its European image.

II. THE ROMAN ATTITUDES TOWARD SLAVERY

One of the questions that has to be asked is, how did Rome become multicultural? This question can be answered several ways, but for our interest as well as for the most part, it became multicultural through the system of slavery. Slaves were brought to Italy from the south and east of the Mediterranean after the conquest and plunder of the Roman campaigns. The slaves encompassed importantly also other Europeans, in particular from Gaul, Spain, and later on Britain. Also, the Germanic tribes to the north of Italy in what is today Germany, Austria, and the Balkans came flooding into Rome for sale. An important question that has to be asked is, what was the Romans attitude toward slavery? And was it just as rigid as the slavery that would later be developed under the mentality of White Supremacy?

Enslavement in Ancient Rome derived much of its implementations from attitudes that came down to them from the Greeks, especially Aristotle. Aristotle in his work Politics observed that slavery came about out of the fact that some men were more superior to others. Slavery was a part of the natural order under which all human beings—men, women, children, and even animals—were subject in the Greek philosopher’s opinion.

For Aristotle, there were two types of slaves that had to be distinguished. The first type of slave was the one who was made inferior by nature. The second type of slave came into existence because of a misfortune of circumstance: either through the inability to pay a debt or from the collateral damage attributed to the act of war. However, the latter slave of misfortune maintained the faculties to mental superiority unlike the former, who Aristotle assumed had none to begin with.

This is why to Aristotle, it was inherently wrong to put the shackles of slavery on the slave of misfortune. Also, Greeks only applied the word ‘slave’ itself to the non- Hellenic barbarians. We shall see later on this tactic of linguistics would be used in the differential treatment given to African and European laborers as a way of distinguishing their roles in the new American society and under the law. Nevertheless, digressing on with the Greco-Roman thoughts on slavery, one must continue with the views expounded by Aristotle’s concept of Hellenic superiority, which have a direct descent down to the Roman as heirs to the pathology of the legendary philosopher with his own words:

Hellenes regard themselves as noble everywhere, and not only in their own country, but they deem the barbarians noble only when at home, thereby implying that there are two kinds of nobility and freedom the one absolute the other relative.⁴

These formulations of Hellenic supremacy were upheld by the Romans in a cultural sense. Since Rome derived much of its religion, politics, art, and philosophy from the Greeks, if not all of it, they made a point of having their Greek slaves educate their children as a way of immersing them in Greek culture.

Lastly, one must deal with Aristotle’s views on what constituted natural slavery. According to Aristotle, the natural slave was not exactly viewed as an animal or considered exactly a human being. The natural slave was to be understood as something caught in stasis somewhere in between the animal and the human state. As he said himself, He who is by nature not his own but another’s man, is by nature a slave; and he may be said to be another’s man who, being a human being is also a possession.⁵ Now this aspect of inferiority was applied to the other Europeans who were not Greek and were not just reserved for non-Greeks of color. By the time of Aristotle, Hellenic civilization had spread, via the colonies of the Greek city-states, to southern Italy and France as well as to Spain and Sicily. In the quest for colonies, the city-states enslaved the populace and exploited their labor. The Spartans famously enslaved the people of the town of Helus, who were their Laconian neighbors, so that they would not have to waste their time on nonmilitary pursuits like agriculture. The inferiority of a person was not segregated to a particular color as it would become under the reasoning of later Europeans. Aristotle maintained the slave was a tool that needed a master in order to direct it to its usefulness within civilization.

The Romans, on the other hand, would embellish the Greco-Aristotelian aspects of slavery to encompass a wide swath of activity ranging from entertainment and a torturous disregard for humanity on the one side to full integration and bureaucratic maintenance on the other. Enslavement to the Romans, as well as to the Greeks, was considered to be as Nathaniel Weyl called it a forward step in civilization from the earlier practice of killing them.⁶ Aside from the agricultural output that the slave provided for the Roman populace of Italy, they were artisans, gladiators, tutors, and sometimes bureaucrats. Later during the waning years of the Empire, the barbarian element would be allowed to fight the battles of the state and become soldiers within her famed legions to make up for the lack of pure blooded Roman stock who at that time was failing to produce enough offspring to replenish its armies.

Through these variances on the work of a slave, the Romans broke away from the Greeks and Aristotle, who in his Economics taught there were only three things that are supposed to make up a slave’s life: work, punishment and food.⁷ But these were base conscriptions of labor. The Greeks would have never allowed for their slaves to help them groom their children since they viewed natural slaves inferior. Even slaves of chance were not given the high caliber of employment that the Roman slave was, having proved proficiency.

The Greek slave of Rome—having been acknowledged as coming from a superior civilization, or at least one just as sophisticated as Rome—could be allowed to express their refinement within slavery without reproach. In fact, the Greek slave in Rome, out of all the nationalities of slaves that inhabited the city and Italy as well, had an easier time gaining independence. And in no more than one generation could anticipate becoming fully integrated seamlessly into the Roman citizenry with full rights. Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political writer, made a point of referring to this fact of Roman slavery in comparison to the slavery in the United States when he said,

In antiquity the slave was of the same race as his master and often, his superior in education and enlightenment. Only freedom kept them apart; freedom once granted, they mingled easily.⁸

It should not be taken for granted, though, that the Romans viewed all Greeks as their superiors. Indeed, the Greek men who were not either men of letters or properly trained in philosophy would be retained for a tougher form of slavery, which was physical rather than comfortable. For these troglodytes the road to freedom would be tougher to ascertain.

Also, Europeans who were deemed inferior to the Romans had other value that did not have anything to do with the intellect but the aesthetic. Physically the Romans were an olive-skinned people with hair that, in the generality, either bore the shade of black or brown. Few Romans could boast a pale complexion or the features inherent in the Gaelic ethnicities. Precisely because blond hair and blue eyes were not the norm. Nor was red hair and green eyes. Besides, they began to imagine their gods and heroes with these Teutonic/Nordic features, thereby making these physical characteristics the very standards of beauty. At the time, the only people who had those precious endowments in abundance on the European continent were the Germanic tribes to the north of the empire.²

Though the Germanic tribes were considered to be uncivilized and therefore inferior, the Roman took notice of their physical attributes and admired their superior aesthetic beauty. Once enslaved, Roman women of the aristocracy would shear the locks off the heads of these Germanic peoples and use their hair in order to supply the material needed to coiffure a wig. From the last hundred years of the Republic to the time of Constantine and the last years of the Western Empire, it was fashionable for women of royal and aristocratic pedigree to where wigs of blond and red hair made from these slaves. Sometimes substantial fortunes were made by Roman businesses when they would simply devote their enterprise to the marketing and importing of their German slaves to meet the demands of their consumers.⁹

Upper-class Roman men even took to the fashion of wearing wigs made from the locks of Germanic barbarians whether or not their hair was thinning. The importance of this phenomenon of the conquerors valuing the physical features of a people, who they deemed inferior, demonstrates a fascinating attitude that is rarely seen if ever. This being the time before the color line of the Europeans of the fifteenth and sixteenth century was implemented, therefore predating obviously modern conceptions of beauty, it is striking to observe how the slave population from the north of Italy would exude such an influence on how the upper echelon viewed themselves, thereby creating a standard that, because of their rank and class as the decision makers and trend setters of the society of Rome, would undoubtedly have the result of affecting psychologically how the lower classes viewed themselves in turn not only in Rome but throughout the Empire.

Beauty, though not in any way influenced by modern preconceptions, would not even in antiquity tend toward the African characteristics: dark eyes, hair, and skin. The dark features of the African ethnicities would maintain a place of beauty in its own right to be sure in antiquity; but already the Romans were carving out a place whereupon the blond, the redhead, blue-eyed or green-eyed person would be held in a high esteem due to no merit having anything to do with their mental capacity but a uniqueness of artificial superiority. The conquerors’ worship of the conquered aesthetic of the Germanic/Saxon physicality would mark a pivotal moment in the development of the Europeans’ method of distinguishing themselves from ethnic groups. Since both Italians and Greeks had a dark complexion due to the relatively warm climate of the Mediterranean, as well as being in close contact to dark-skinned ethnic groups, there was very little to physically set apart the Romans from their neighbors to the south. Swarthiness was a mainstay to the Mediterranean peoples, but that the Romans would use the physical appearance of not only a sworn enemy but an inferior ethnic group as a mark of separation is an unprecedented move toward racial superiority.

One of the things one must keep in mind, though, is just because the Romans were trying to find a way to physically distinguish themselves from their Mediterranean neighbors does not mean they associated inferior work to a skin color. To the contrary, it was relatively easy for a person of color to rise in Roman society without it being particularly taboo. The noted historian Edward Gibbon uncovered in his research of the Roman history evidence of an African widow living in the Roman Empire who was wealthy and bequeathed an estate of an estimated four hundred slaves to her son whilst she reserved for herself a much larger share of her property.¹⁰ People of color also became Roman citizens of the Empire without any kind of unusual difficulty––as the Middle Eastern Saul of Tarsus (St. Paul) would use to his advantage. Later, even non-Italian citizens of African origin would become part of the Roman legion.

There was egalitarianism to the word inferior that was not color based. The fact that Roman society acknowledged Egyptian as well as some other Asia Minor civilizations as their superior fore bearers, now subject to the military might of Rome, allowed for a less difficult assimilation. There would be under the dictatorship of Caesar a break from the xenophobic attitudes of the patrician class. Non-Italians would prosper especially after the dismemberment of the Republic.

III. THE IMPACT OF CLEOPATRA AND HER RELATIONSHIP WITH ROME AND HER LEADERS

Julius Caesar would open the floodgates to the non-Italians and their prosperity in Rome by taking power out the hands of the patrician class and consolidating that power into his own hands as dictator. Under Caesar, the prestigious Roman Senate, central arbiter of foreign policy under the Republic, was increased from six hundred to nine hundred members. Most of the new senators, to the outrage of the patrician aristocracy, were the chieftains from the uncivilized Gaul as well as non-Italian citizens from the provincial cities; and more importantly, the august Roman body had senators who were now only one generation removed from slavery, with nouveau riche businessmen, common leading citizens, and former soldiers rounding out the reformed body. The scandal of Caesar’s policy so outraged the pureblooded Romans that a couplet was composed about the progressive agenda of the dictator:

Gallos Caesar in triumphum ducit, idem in curiam; Galli braccus deposuerant, latum clavum supserunt-¹¹

Caesar’s program of reconstruction after the civil war also incorporated protection for the African cult devoted to the worship of the goddess Iris as well as the protection of the religious practice of the Jews. Being an agnostic himself, Caesar had very little interest in keeping laws that persecuted foreigners unnecessarily. Caesar’s political course of championing the multicultural assimilation of the ethnic makeup of the empire would be followed as the set policy in regards to Romanizing those who came from a non-Italian background, even after his assassination. It was a bold and ambitious social policy, which was accepted by the plebeians for the most part, but the patrician aristocrats (as well as the subsequent royal successors to Julius Caesar) would resist the mixing of the races when it came to the preservation of their own dynasties’ bloodline.

Nowhere was this xenophobia more pronounced than in the patrician families. They might have admired the physical features of the non-Italians of northern Europe, but this did not mean they considered it respectable to mix with them. For when even the chieftains or the kings would ask for the hand of a noblewoman of Rome, who came from a fine Patrician background, these foreign potentates would be refused.

The few exceptions to this social protocol such as with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony was so disastrous that even Caesars of later dynasties would not even consider mixing their blood with someone who was not a Roman until the empire had changed irreparably and the patrician families had contracepted themselves out of existence.

It is worth looking at briefly the liaison both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony had with the Egyptian Pharaoh Cleopatra VII because of the uniqueness of her pedigree and her influence on the prejudice that was impacted deeply by her political presence.

What is important to understand and acknowledge about Cleopatra is that as queen of Egypt she almost came within a hair’s breadth of reorienting the empire of Rome into an Afro-Greco style of imperialism, which would have shifted not only the course of the Mediterranean world but world history in general; had she and her husband Mark Antony not lost the Battle of Actium, the West would have been more African and Eastern centered. Cleopatra VII was born into the thirty-second dynasty to rule Egypt, which took its name from one of the generals that accompanied the Macedonian, King Alexander the Great, during his wars and eventually became the pharaoh himself under his name of Ptolemy. It was through him this dynasty of kings claimed their Greek heritage. An incestuous tradition of intermarriage with siblings and cousins permeated the lineage of the Ptolemies from Ptolemy to Cleopatra herself. It is hard to be believe though that this dynasty could have lasted as long as it did (from 332 BC to 30 BC), almost three centuries, without having introduced fresh blood into their dynamic of dynastic reproduction from time to time as previous royal Egyptian families resorted to in order to replenish royal blood for fit longevity; as revealed from even a basic pedestrian comprehension of genetic science, no family can long sustain incestuous relations as the primary vehicle for procreation and hope to survive without (in a relatively short time) degenerating their bloodline to the point of extinction.³ From this assessment, one must come to the conclusion that Cleopatra and the Ptolemaic pharaohs had long since, from time to time, began intermingling their blood with the Egyptian nobles who served them. Although she definitely had Greek blood flowing through her veins, she most likely had the blood of Egyptian nobility coursing through those very same veins too. There is no firm documentation of who Cleopatra’s mother truly was, but we may suspect that like the pharaohs of old, the Ptolemies had a harem of consorts that were not queens or the primary wife of the king but who, nevertheless, served as the concubines of the monarch to ensure that the throne was never want of heirs (as was the African and Oriental custom) in regards to dynastic sexual politics. The paternity of Cleopatra is unequivocal on the other hand. Her father was King Ptolemy XI, surnamed Arletes, and he was the last male head of any significance to rule in his own right, via Roman backing. By the time Cleopatra had inherited the throne from her father, Egypt was a kingdom worn out by the over taxation and the gluttony of the Ptolemies on the one hand and exploitation by Rome both politically and economically on the other. What Egypt and Cleopatra needed was a new beginning.

This opportunity came in (47 BC) when Caesar arrived in Alexandria in search of his defeated co-consul Pompey Magnus. He discovered upon his arrival that he had already been executed by the boy Pharaoh, Ptolemy XII, who was Cleopatra’s husband, brother, and coruler, and all at once. After tending to the remains of his former rival and giving them a proper Roman funeral ceremony, Caesar decided to stay and settle the succession turmoil that had driven Cleopatra out of the city. Famously, Cleopatra came to Caesar secretly and pleaded her case to the Roman dictator with both her political shrewdness and Oriental charms of persuasion.⁴

Caesar succumbed to the bargaining of this eighteen-year-old queen; and once he defeated the forces of Ptolemy XII and his general Achillas, he settled the succession in Cleopatra’s favor, making her the Pharaoh with her younger brother, Ptolemy XIII, as her consort. Caesar and Cleopatra became lovers at this time, and she is alleged to have begotten a son by the great general who she aptly named Caesarion in honor of the child’s paternity. Caesar, after crushing what was left of the Pompeian army, returned to Rome with his Egyptian lover and illegitimate son in tow (46 BC). To the scandal of the Roman aristocracy, from which he descended, he acknowledged the child as his own and to the shame of his wife, Calpurnia, housed the Egyptian monarch and her retinue in a villa just outside of the capital. Now it must be stated in both fairness and candor to the history of Caesar’s sexual conquests that this relationship with Cleopatra was not his first tryst with a monarch, who was of non-European descent; according to Suetonius, the Ancient Roman chronicler of the various histories of the public and private lives of the first emperors of Rome, Caesar counted among his mistresses several foreign queens, including the dark-skinned African Eunoë, the wife of Bogudes the African ruler who was loaded with presents by the Roman ruler as evidence of his affection for her; and interestingly enough, Suetonius adds to the list of African and Oriental monarchs to have shared a bed with Caesar King Nicomedes of Bithynia.⁵¹² This last relationship of Caesar caused the dictator much heartache because even though homosexuality was an accepted practice in Rome—when it involved the male sex, indeed the Romans would later allow religious cults to perform nuptials between two males—the fact Caesar was not attributed to be the husband in this relationship carried with it the implication of the possible influence of King Nicomedes in the Roman affairs of state. Caesar was not just negating his manhood to a foreign prince but allowing in turn this foreigner to dominate him in his policy decisions. Once, Cicero, the famed senator and contemporary of Caesar during these times (while Rome was in transition from democracy to monarchy), was not shy of mentioning the act of sodomy with the king of Bithynia to the consul’s face. Suetonius mentions the incident where Cicero interrupted the Caesar as he was addressing the other senators on the issue of the his obligations to King Nicomedes and his children and said rudely, Enough of that if you please! We all know what he gave you, and what he gave you in return.¹² It was an embarrassing episode for him in his public life, and his enemies never hesitated to remind him of the blotch this relationship had on his reputation. Ironically, it was during this affair that Caesar’s pretensions to a crown became publicly noticed.⁶ There is no doubt that the intimate relationship Caesar had with the Bithynian king, who was not of Roman blood, colored somewhat his relationship with his new royal amour. Maturer and indeed more surreptitious politically about his private life during this period of his dictatorship, he maintained the public image that he played the role of the husband and master of this new dalliance. The aristocracy and his wife may have still been scandalized by the new dictator’s keeping of the Egyptian queen in luxury outside of the city, but this was a vice that even his enemies could agree would not jeopardize the interests of the Roman Empire.

The most detailed description of the Egyptian queen, Cleopatra, comes from the noted Ancient Roman historical biographer Plutarch. Though Plutarch was not an eyewitness to these events surrounding the life of the last Egyptian Pharaoh—he, like Suetonius, was removed by a span of over one hundred years from the persons of who their pens brought to vivid life—he had access to contemporary archival accounts of the period, now lost to history but for their appearance in the works of the first-century chroniclers, in which these illustrious characters lived and were voluminously described not only physically but also in the atmosphere in which they operated. In keeping with this formation of information from which these historians from antiquity were able to reconstruct the past, Plutarch gave a description of the famous queen that did not primarily capture her physical appearance in an altogether emphatic way. Plutarch, being a Greek, painted an enchanting portrait of the African queen who had descended from Macedonian royalty and was a kinswoman of Alexander the Great. Plutarch describes her as follows:

For her actual beauty, it is said, was not in itself so remarkable that none could be compared to it…but the contact of her presence, if you lived with her, was irresistible; the attraction of her person, joining with the charm of her conversation, and the character that attended all she said and did, was something bewitching.¹³

Here Plutarch combines all the qualities of Cleopatra’s appearance and charm while simultaneously still being illusive and mysterious about what she actually looked like in regards to her color of her skin, hair, eyes, as well as her height. Plutarch says nothing illustrative about her beauty other than she did not have any kind of extraordinary look to her that compared to the Roman ideal or made her stand out from the crowd of other gorgeous ladies of aristocratic rank. As stated before, the patricians’ standard of beauty was idealized in the Gallic or Germanic barbarians to the North. The swarthy olive complexion of the Egyptian queen would not have struck the patrician eye with any kind of melodramatic flight of inspiring fancy. For coloring like hers was in abundance among the plebs in the Forum, and the majority of southern Italians had a dark olive complexion as befitting the heavy sun of the Mediterranean environment; only a scarcity of Romans could boast of having a fair complexion. Nonetheless, she did possess a bone structure men found enchanting, and she was noted in her lifetime for her maintenance of beauty by contemporaries that she is said to have authored a popular treatise on the techniques of cosmetics. Furthermore, what can be gleaned from Plutarch’s description of Cleopatra’s appearance must be seen in the context of her political significance, which is why the Greek historian combines the sophistication of the queen’s charm, grace, and deportment to her all-around perception, which did most of the work of seduction for her. Any one of the patrician class of Rome would find the pharaoh’s emphasis of projecting her image of a well-groomed courtier to be quite magnetizing, especially given her mastery of several languages––in particular Latin. It was finally the way in which Cleopatra carried herself that allured so many of the most powerful men in Rome to her. The je ne sais quoi of her personality and her ability to use every characteristic she had at her command to infatuate and later manipulate powerful men were what set her above the other politicians of her day and for twenty-two years allowed her to navigate the dangerous waters of her time. This is what Plutarch more than anything wants to convey to his readers: the very essence of her diplomatic skill and worth, together with her instinct for survival coupled with whatever physical attractiveness she possessed, which most of the time gave her the ability to outmaneuver her adversaries.

Nevertheless, the fact she had descended from Macedonian Greeks and had a good breeding and pedigree, which exalted her position in Rome, did nothing to ease the animosity that was building against Caesar and Cleopatra, as his primary mistress. The patrician class saw Cleopatra as a threat to Roman interests; and no matter how much Caesar tried to downplay his relationship with the queen, gossip and innuendo were spread by the aristocracy to the plebs: that Caesar was planning to deconstruct the noble institutions of the republic and declare himself king, and once this takes place, he will issue an edict that will move the capital of the empire to Alexandria or some Eastern city, thus subordinating the Romans to their political inferiors. Indeed, Julius Caesar’s high-handed policies in regards to the governing of not only the provinces but also to the reformatting of the exclusive makeup of the Roman Senate with conquered barbarian chiefs of Germanic and Gallic origin, not to mention the elevation of the sons of former slaves to the great august body, added the element of validity to these rumors. Another controversy was Caesar pushing for the extension of Roman citizenship to all adult males no matter their ethnicity on the condition of proof of their freedom (this edict would be fulfilled later).

It is hard to know how much Cleopatra influenced the policies of Caesar. Whatever overtures were made to appease the ambition of the Egyptian Queen other than acknowledging the parentage of her son and allowing her to rule her kingdom unhindered, as long as she provided grain in abundance to Italy and kept her purse open to the future military campaigns and subsidy for the bribes of her lover, is circumstantial in the end. All that can be said, objectively, is Caesar never allowed himself to be gelded by Cleopatra into reckless policies that would have rendered disastrous consequences that would have forced him into compromising positions where his own ambitions are dashed on her political shore of motivations.

In spite of his lusts, Caesar made sure his politics had the upper hand above Cleopatra’s desires. Although he claimed Caesarion, he named his great-nephew, Octavius, his sole heir to his wealth, name, and political legacy (undoubtedly, this must have disappointed Cleopatra). Then, Caesar did something that no self-respecting Ptolemy would do and gave a share of his wealth (300 sesterces) to every citizen living in Rome along with the use of his formerly private gardens. This most certainly must have shocked the imperious sensibilities of an Egyptian pharaoh who looked down upon her subjects as a deity. Caesar’s most important mistress was power, and not even for the pleasures of the flesh would the dictator betray it in favor of this glamorous rival. Unlike his successor in the queen’s affections, Mark Antony, Caesar always put politics ahead of any personal attachment and would never do anything consciously to make his grip on power negligible after working hard to obtain it.

When Caesar was assassinated in (44 BC) on the floor of the Senate by a group of Senators led by Brutus and Cassius, Cleopatra, fearing for the life of her son and herself, fled to Egypt; her dreams of an empire under an Egyptian/Greco unification instead of a Latin one seemingly ended. Though the patricians had lost the war against Caesar’s proposals with the defeat of Brutus, they had preserved the Latin culture not only for themselves but the Empire. The establishment of the Triumvirate—which divided the Roman Empire first into three ways but then into two, between Octavius Caesar and Mark Antony—the aristocrats thought they had nothing to fear from a southeastern influence. All was tranquilly won for the Latin culture until Antony, as ruler and consul for the Eastern Roman territories, summoned the manipulative pharaoh to give an accounting and wound up instead ceding to her some of the most lucrative Eastern territories of the Empire: Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, Cyprus, parts of Arabia, Cilicia, and Judea. Antony returned with Cleopatra to Alexandria totally bewitched by the queen’s charms.

Unlike his predecessor Caesar, Mark Antony was supple to the whims of his lust and subordinated his politics to that of Cleopatra’s. However, Octavius, seeing the danger of an alliance between Antony and Cleopatra, offered the hand of his sister Octavia as a way of uniting the blood of Caesar to that of his trusted general and political protégé through the matrimonial state. Mark Antony accepted this political marriage and left the arms of Cleopatra in the name of preserving the peace between himself and Octavius. This would be the last time Antony would behave in the manner of his former mentor. Thus, Octavius, for the moment, outmaneuvered his nemesis and kept Latin culture as the predominate culture in the Roman Empire.

But the marriage between Mark Antony and Octavia was short-lived. After giving Octavia two daughters, he divorced her (32 BC) and to the scandal of patrician etiquette married Cleopatra causing irreversible humiliation to Octavius’s honor. Mark Antony now completely wedded to the policy of the subjugation of the West to the Eastern Empire, and its influences, with Cleopatra as his consort as well as co-ruler, presented a formidable threat to the invalid Octavius, who had virtually no military acumen and who Antony always resented as unworthy of Caesar’s legacy.⁷ The odds of the outcome of the clash of Mediterranean civilization seemed to be in Cleopatra and Mark Antony’s favor.

Apparently Mark Antony did not mind being led by a woman in such important political matters. Indeed, it may, in fact, have been a natural habit for him to do so, as confirmed by the historian Plutarch.⁸ Whatever the reason for the Roman general’s acquiescence to the African ruler, Cleopatra began preparations for the inevitable war against Octavius. The pharaoh amassed troops and constructed a fleet for her husband, and while in the process of doing this, she also provided him with three children. Confident of future success, Cleopatra was reported to have constantly sworn by the oath, As surely as I shall one day give judgment in the Capitol (meaning the Senate Building of Rome).¹⁴

This brings to view a very important point about the Egyptian Queen that must be controversy, especially because of the misapprehension that some Western educators have projected by incorporating great figures in history who lived before the sixteenth century into the classification of the post sixteenth-century color line and the morals around miscegenation it reflected. This infraction, as has clearly been dispelled by the writings of the contemporaries of the period, has been committed by both sides of the racial divide who are responsible for education: by the European educators and archaeologists who say that Cleopatra was 100 percent Greek and by those who are of African ethnicity who say, with certainty, she was 100 percent African. In truth she was not 100 percent of either. Cleopatra was reputed to have had quite a good deal of Persian blood—one-fifth to be exact. Many Egyptologists have recently conceded the point—to ambivalence—and resigned themselves to saying she had both Egyptian and Greek blood.⁹ The issue of Cleopatra’s ethnicity has its roots in the school of thought started by European scholars in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries declaring Egyptians were not Africans. They were of a Caucasian origin and therefore not tied genetically to a race that was considered to be inferior. Though this ignorant assertion predominated the pathology for the better part of three centuries, it has been now, for the most part, debunked by modern thinkers.

Nevertheless, the effect this had on the black scholars, in particular the African American, were to give a blanket justification to many of these rulers who happened to be of African descent. This acted as a device within education to reclaim the role the African played in the building of civilization. But one should not toy in either case with the history of the extensive period, which predates the establishment of White Supremacy via the sixteenth-century color line. For it is dangerous to project onto this period of human history an inferiority associated with the darkness of skin. As a matter of fact, the people who inhabited North Africa and the Middle East were considered to be more cultured and civilized than most of the population of Europe at this time. The hatred of this era had to do with both ethnic/tribal differences rather than with color, which explains why, during this age, two ethnic groups of the same complexion could hate each other so vehemently. There was simply no unity based upon similarity of color and no motivating factor for brown- and dark-skinned ethnicities to have a psychological pathos as such. How could Cleopatra or any historic person of note, in the four thousand years’ recorded history proceeding the late sixteenth century, relate to the system of hatred that was designed to oppress people of a dark pigmentation? Also, one has to be careful that the blanket acceptance of these African potentates does not legitimize the brutal methods that they employed to maintain order during their rule (i.e., torture, slavery, etc.) and what the people of color in particular Americans of African descent claim to be against today. This is just a few of the consequences of reasoning along these lines. Surely people of color who are heavily invested in this school of thought that recklessly links persons of African descent who have proceeded the color line of post-sixteenth-century Europe to the persons of African heritage who live under its peril need to seriously consider the intellectual implication of what they are writing and teaching.

The clash between Egypt and Rome came to a head at Actium on September 2, 31 BC. It was one of the most pivotal battles between East and West with the fate of Europe in the balance. Had Octavius lost, Cleopatra’s dream of Egyptian/Greco domination would have been fulfilled by her son, Caesarion, as not only king of Egypt but also Caesar’s heir (as the absolute ruler of the Mediterranean) with her children from Antony, as his will revealed, as rulers of the Eastern territories of the Roman Empire, thereby bringing an end to Latin influence. Octavius, however, was a cleverer politician than Mark Antony and made sure before he left Rome to go and meet his rivals for power; the Roman plebeians were united in their xenophobia and prejudice to foreigners with the patricians. Antony—in spite of his repudiation of his second wife, Octavia—still had a strong following among the plebeians in the capital. In order to undercut and erode plebeian support for Antony, he declared war on Cleopatra instead of Antony, read his will bequeathing the Roman Empire to Caesarion and his children by his third wife to the Senate to reinforce political support, and appealed to the patriotism of the common citizen and made, what was up till then a battle for personal power, a holy war for Roman independence against the threat of foreign tyranny, therefore making it imperative for all Romans of every class and status to understand what was at stake and it was the maniacal Cleopatra who was the enemy, not the Roman-born Mark Antony.

Octavius, aware of his weakness in military affairs, left the execution of the battle of Actium to his friend and head general Agrippa. Mark Antony normally a great general on land was forced to engage Agrippa on the sea, where he was a better tactician.

Agrippa devastated the Egyptian fleet; and Antony, seeing that his and Cleopatra’s cause was lost, signaled for Cleopatra, who was present at the battle, to give the command to set sail (Roman gossip would color the retreat of the Pharaoh as taking Antony by surprise). Later Octavius would pursue them to Alexandria, where Cleopatra tried to entice Octavius into an amicable settlement that would allow her to remain a vassal ruler. Octavius met her negotiations with resignation, unimpressed by her charms or her bribes. Not wanting to be paraded around Rome in chains, in complete humiliation, she resigned herself to her fate. After testing a number of poisons on her own subjects who were sentenced to die, she found an almost painless way (believed to be an asp to the breast) to kill herself and join her Roman husband Antony, who had committed suicide earlier, in death (30 BC).

Even with the death of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, Octavius knew his supremacy would not be secure over the Roman Empire or the Egyptians as long as Cleopatra’s son by his great-uncle Caesar was left alive. He did something ruthlessly ingenious for a person of his political youth. Octavius only ordered the death of the eldest sons of Cleopatra and Mark Antony; with their murder any offspring who had any legitimate claim to Roman inheritance was once and for all out of the way. Then he gave the sons (Alexander Helios and Ptolemy) and daughter (Cleopatra Selene) of his dead rivals to Antony’s disgraced second wife and his devoted sister, Octavia, as a way of ensuring not only the bloodless death of the Ptolemaic Dynasty of Pharaohs but also seeing to it that they would be of a more European orientation as opposed to either an African and Oriental one. From this act of benevolence, the Egyptians were much easier inclined, after being burdened with the heavy taxes by their last Pharaoh and her ancestors, to proclaim Octavius their new Pharaoh, thereby acquiescing finally to the absorption of the European empire.

What this episode did for the Caesars down through the centuries was confirm that the