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"For the Ethiopians (Greek and
Roman name for all Negroid people) are said to be the justest men
and for that reason the gods leave their abode frequently to visit
them."1
-Lactantius Placidus, a 6th century AD grammarian
"The Negroes are of all peoples those who most
abhor injustice…Complete and general safety one enjoys throughout the
land (Mali Empire in West
Africa)."2
Ibn Battua, 14th century Arab scholar who had traveled to China, India,
East Africa, North Africa, and finally Mali.
Many people believe that
blacks are innately more inclined to act immorally and less able to control
their behavior. Many cite the inner cities and Africa
as proof. Does history disprove that stereotype? Without a doubt is
does; before the Atlantic slave trade foreigners regularly commented on
Negroes moral character and love for justice.
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Ancient Attitudes on Black Morality
Europe's first written stories highlight the
Ethiopian's (Greek and Roman name for all black people) morality and
noble character. In the Iliad,
Homer--explaining why the Olympian Gods loved the Ethiopians more than
any other people and visited them for an annual twelve day
feast--described blacks as, "Blameless Ethiopians."3
Homer also wrote:
For Zeus had yesterday to Ocean's bounds
Set forth to feast with Ethiopia's
faultless men,
And he was followed there by all the gods…4
Memnon, the "King of
the Ethiopians," who came to the aid of Priam at Troy, is shown as
having an unusually noble character; In battle he slays Antilochus,
then, in one of the more sympathetic moments of the epic, spares
Antilochus's defenseless father. 5
Memnon later became a hero in Greece,
Egypt, Nubia, and Meroe
(a powerful black kingdom in Ethiopia
and the Sudan).
Alexander the Great even wanted to visit the Kingdom of Meroe
because it was believed to be the birthplace of Memnon. 7
In Egypt's southern
city of Thebes
there were two colossi of Memnon, both built by Ethiopians. One of the
two colossi attracted a large number of tourists; many believing that
it sang at dawn. Callistratus, an Athenian statesman and orator,
regarded the colssi as a miracle that surpassed even the skill needed
to build the masterpiece of Daedalus."8
At sunrise Egyptians in Memphis
made sacrifices to the statue of the Negro king.9
Odysseus's herald
Eurybates, who Homer described as having black skin and woolly hair,
had an extraordinarily noble character; the hero Odysseus held him in
higher esteem than anyone else because he believed they had similar
minds.10
Interpreting the Homeric
references about the Ethiopians Diodorus, a famous ancient Sicilian historian,
wrote:
"And they say that they (Ethiopians) were the first to be
taught to honor the gods and to hold sacrifices and festivals and
processions and festivals and the other rites by which men honor the
deity; and that in consequence their piety has been published abroad
among all men, and it is generally held that the sacrifices
practiced among the Ethiopians are those which are the most pleasing to
heaven. As witness to this they call upon the poet who is perhaps the oldest and certainly
the most venerated among the Greeks; for in the Iliad he represents both Zeus and the rest of the gods
with him as absent on a visit to Ethiopia to share in the sacrifices
and the banquet which were given annually to the Ethiopians for all the
gods together….And they state that by reason of their piety towards
the deity, they manifestly enjoy the favor of the gods, inasmuch as
they have never experienced the rule of an invader from abroad; for
from all time they have enjoyed a state of freedom and of peace one
with another, and although many and powerful rulers have made war
upon them, not one of these has succeeded in his undertaking."11
Many other famous Greco-Roman
writers commented on the Ethiopians' piety. Dionysius, like Homer,
wrote that the Ethiopians were godlike and blameless. Aelian believed
that Ethiopia
is where the gods bathed."12
Stobaeus recorded that the Ethiopians do not need doors on their
homes and do not steal the possessions that their neighbors leave in
the street.13
In one of Heliodorus's plays an Ethiopian king, Hydaspes, is a model of
morality and justice. The king does not condemn people to death, and
sends out messengers to tell his military troops not slaughter the
enemy, but to let them live when they have been defeated. The king
proclaimed, "A noble thing it is to surpass an enemy in battle
when he is standing but in generosity when he has fallen."
Lactantius Placidus, a 6th century AD grammarian wrote, "Certainly
they (Ethiopians) are loved by the gods because of justice. This
even Homer indicates in the first book by the fact that Jupiter
frequently leaves heaven and feasts with them because of their justice
and the equity of their customs. For the Ethiopians are said to be
the justest men and for that reason the gods leave their abode
frequently to visit them."15
In the second century AD a marble sarcophagus, commemorating the
triumph of the God Bacchus, used two Negro boys as symbols of
innocence. In a Greek play about Alexander the Great, an Ethiopian
queen told Alexander: "we are whiter and brighter in our souls
than the whitest of you."16
The religion of Ethiopian
immigrants, Isiac, spread throughout the Greco-Roman world because of
the Ethiopians renowned piety. The Greek and Roman adherents of Isiac
were excited to learn from Merotic immigrants. Juvenal, a 1st and 2nd
century A.D Roman satirical poet, recorded that some wealthy Greek,
Roman, and Egyptian Isiac noblemen even made a pilgrimage to Meroe in order to
obtain its holy water."17
In the ancient and
medieval Arab-world Nubian slaves were often used as financial
assistants because they were thought of as honest and
trustworthy."18
A 9th century
biography on the prophet Muhammad, by Ibn Hisham, tells of a story
where Muhammad instructs those who are being persecuted in Mecca to "go to Abyssinian (Ethiopia), you will find a
king under whom none are persecuted. It is a land of righteousness
where God will give you relief from what you are suffering."19
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Ancient Attitudes on White Morality
White people, on the other hand, were not given such high praise. The
ancient people of Greece
and Rome
believed that the pale skinned people to their north, with their long
and yellow, brown, and red hair, were immoral and inferior savages--just as intensely as whites would later regard blacks.
The Greek geographer,
Strabo, writing about the 7th century Celts, commented:
"Concerning this island, I have nothing further to tell…except
that its inhabitants are more savage than the Britons, since they
are man-eaters…they count it an honorable thing, when their fathers
die, to devour them, and openly to have intercourse with their
mothers and sisters."20
Diodoros wrote the
following about a white clan he visited: "It is their custom,
enduring the course of the meal, to seize upon any trivial matter as an
occasion for disputation and then to challenge one another to single
combat, without any regard for their lives."21
The Greek traveler-writer Pausanias, after witnessing a ritual where the
Arkadians--a people to the north of Rome--killed, dismembered, and
devoured children, had this reaction: "I
was reluctant to pry into the details of this sacrifice…Let them be as
they are and were from the beginning."22
Writing about the Gauls,
located in modern day France,
Caesar recorded: "They believe that the execution of those who
have been caught in the act of theft or robbery or some crime is more
pleasing to the immortal gods, but when the supply of such fails
they resort to the execution of the innocent."23
Herodotus, the famous 5th
century BC historian--often called the "The Father of History"--recorded some of
the many savage practices of the Sythians, a people in modern Russia.
One of the practices consisted of sowing together the scalps of
people whom they had had a confrontation with in order to make a cloak:
"The Scyth is proud of these scalps and hangs them from his
bridle-rein…The greater the number of such napkins that a man can show
the more highly is he esteemed among them….They treat the skulls of
their kinsmen in the same way, in cases where quarrels have
occurred….When important visitors arrive, these skulls are passed
around and the host tells the story of them: how they were once his
relatives and made war against him, and how he defeated them--all of which
passes for a proof of courage."24
Plato, just as white
supremacist would later feel about dark skinned people, believed a war
against those northern barbarians existed by nature. 25
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Medieval Attitudes on Black
Morality
The high esteem the ancients held blacks carried on into the Middle
Ages. Ibn Battuta, writing about the 14th century West African Kingdom
of Mali, recorded: "The small number of acts of injustice that
one finds there, for the Negroes are of all peoples those who most
abhor injustice…Complete and general safety one enjoys throughout the
land."26
Furthermore, he recorded that; "Their sultan shows no mercy to
anyone who is guilty of the least act of it. There is complete
security in the country. Neither traveler nor inhabitant in it has
anything to fear from robbers or men of violence. They do not
confiscate the property of any white (meaning Arab) man who dies in
their country, even if it be uncounted wealth. On the contrary, they
give it into the charge of some trustworthy person among the whites
(Arabs), until the rightful heir takes possession of it."27
Writing in 1622 about the Kingdom of Benin, a Dutchman, Olfert
Dapper, recorded that, "These Negroes…are people who have good
laws and a well-organized police; who live on good terms with the
Dutch and other foreigners who come to trade among them, and to whom they show a thousand
marks of friendship."28
In the 1480's the king of Benin sent an ambassador to Portugal
who was described by the Portuguese as, "a man of good speech and natural
wisdom" who, "desired to learn more about these
lands." They said that, "the arrival of people from…his
country being regarded as an unusual novelty."29
Portugal and Benin had excellent
relations. Duarte Pires, a royal agent in Benin,
wrote in 1516, "The favour which the king of Benin accords us is due to
his love of your highness; and thus he pays us high honour and sets us
at table to dine with his son, and no part of his court is hidden from
us but all the doors are open."30
Pires also recorded that the king of Benin, "ordered a church to
be built in Benin; and they made them Christians straightway; and also
they are teaching them to read, and your highness will be very
pleased to know that they are very good learners."
A European traveler around
1680 recorded that the people of the Guinea Coast
are, "very civil and good-natured people, easy to be dealt
with, condescending to what Europeans require of them in a civil way,
and very ready to return double the presents we make them."32
Following a visit to the
court of the Ugandan king in 1875, Henry Morton Stanley wrote that the
king was neither, "tyrannous savage," nor "wholesale
murderer," as had been told in European fables, "but a
pious Mussulman and an intelligent humane king reigning
absolutely over a vast section of Africa, loved more than hated,
respected more than feared."33
Heinrich Barth, a 19th
century German traveler, recorded that in the Nigerian town of Kano, "a
whole family may live in that country with ease, including every
expense, even that of clothing." All too familiar with the
terrible conditions of the Victorian sweatshops in Europe, Barth wrote:
"If we consider that this industry (textile manufacturing) is not
carried on here as in Europe, in immense establishment degrading man to
the meanest condition of life, but that it gives employment and support
to families without compelling them to sacrifice their domestic habits,
we must presume that Kano ought to be one of the happiest countries
in the world; and so it is so long as its governor, too often lazy
and indolent, is able to defend its inhabitants from the cupidity of
their neighbors, which of course is certainly stimulated by the very
wealth of this country."34
Clearly, the ancient and medieval
sources destroy the myth that black people are naturally inclined to
act immorally or without reflection.
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