The Annals

 

Annals, chronicles, and memoirs of Aguntun's visit to Great Zimbabwe were taken by scholars and beaurocrats during the last days of Great Zimbabwe’s might. Chronicles ranging from Emperor Severus’s proto racist statements concerning Black people to the flight of the followers of Allada to the oqim.

After attending a lecture on Racism in the Roman empire I discussed it with a historian. The lecture was at a palace on the methane ice fields of Titan. The palace's towers rose into the persimmon Hunyadi yellow atmosphere. On a balcony the historian, in the orange suit common in his profession, stated,

“The lecturer was biased beyond belief! Can you believe that he claimed that the Roman Empire was racist? It's preposterous! I’m not saying there wasn’t racism, but historical context needs to be, well, put in context. That Emperor Lucius Septimius Severus quote has been used so, so, so vulgarly.”

“How so?”

“Severus’s remark does highlight negative perceptions of darker-skinned, black people. He had an Aethiop soldier removed from his sight because it was believed that a black person could be an omen in that situation. Most black people in Rome, around this time, were indeed slaves, they were a small percentage of both slave and citizen populations. There was no black community! Just black people. The lecturer tried to paint a picture that mirrors the American slave trade.”

“Another small population of blacks in slaved by … whites?”

“That’s the issue, Most slaves in Rome were “white”! Plus negative perceptions of Black and even the yellows”

“I’m sorry, “Yellows”? What are Yellows? Like East Asian?”

“No, no, I’m using Lucian’s phenotypical classifications. Yellow refers to the color of the hair. Long blond hair of northern Europeans. East Asians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Italian, etc., even albinos, would have been considered “white”. And Aiethiopians would have been considered “Black”. There were a lot of different colors in the category “white”.”

“I seem to remember the lecture talk about Blacks in Greek and Minoan frescos and art. The depictions were positive, until to Romans came and brought the racism.”

“This is markedly untrue. Well, the first part is true, Homer describes the Aethiopians as honorable people. And Black people were all over the place, as they have always been. But when Rome started conquering regions in North Africa many black people came to various regions of the empire as slaves and they had more relations with the lower class plebs than the patricians. At first many plebeians were fearful, or weary of blacks, and patricians didn’t much care for the black slaves, the women of big breasts, and how the flat-nosed, large lips Blacks didn’t conform to the white Roman patrician standards. But the Plebs got over their fear and you’d have instances of white women claiming black ancestry when they had dark-skinned babies. The woman was mostly like cheating, of course, but in a “racist society, this seems weird. Why class the ancestry of people deemed sly, clever, insidious, violent, sexual, and barbaric? Now with this context, we can see Severus's statement made clearer. He was a wealthy empire so his views were classist. He probably also viewed the yellow-haired Norse as barbaric.”

“Were perceptions of black mostly negative or positive?”

“Mostly negative, but again, who writes the history, the patricians. Another thing to think about is the use anachronistic use of the term “racist”. One can’t call Severus a racist in the modern sense. The term is not synchronic. Severus’s racism is closer to that of the kind of racism James  Baldwin encountered in the Swiss village. He was the first black many of those people had ever seen. And while they were wary at first keeping their distance, many eventually got over their fear and started conversations with him, etc. The villager's initial “racism” was not systemic, it was ignorance. Today we are past that, but in the mid 21st century a view of black people as a bad omen would have been steeped in the history of slavery and segregation. Severus’s “racism” didn’t come from a place of thinking all black people were inferior steeped in pseudoscientific views, it was based on elitist superstition. Also, Black people did achieve heights in Roman society, well there was one black senator. There was not chattel slavery in the same way as it would be later. Negative perceptions of Black people do predate the 1400s and the slave trade.” 

When I asked him where he did his research he said,

“The University at Great Zimbabwe.”

So shocked and enthralled was I that I went into a confused, choppy detailed rant about my Moremic studies, saying,

“Moremic scholarship. I’m studying texts around Allada. I know Aguntan went to Great Zimbabwe. He had the….A chronicle of Roman perceptions and origin of, the Tale of Aido.”

“Yes. I studied the text, the Tale of Aido and Aguntan’s Chronicles. He not only spoke of Roman perceptions of Blacks he spoke of the Mapungubwean relations with Roman. The Mapungubwean would have nothing to do with Rome. The Mapungubweans would talk to the Eastern Romans years later. The Romans wanted an uneven trade relationship, but when they were willing to compromise the Mapungubweans wanted more. It was a loss for the Romans, at least according to the mythology.”

“The space travels?”

 “Yeah, apparently the Mapungubweans offered the Romans materials from the stars. Many Roman senators and other Patricians thought it was trickery, again those negative perceptions of blacks by elite Romans, until a few Romans claimed to have witnessed a ship descend the clouds with a small contingent of Black warriors. When the Roman senators faltered in the negotiations, wanting more than they should have asked for, the Mapungubweans gave up on negotiating and simply left. The few Roman witnesses were never believed, many recanted their stories, many except for Herius Flavictus. He held to his story as he was laughed into suicide.”

The University of Great Zimbabwe was not a place for the unaugmented. The Historians I was talking to came from wealth. His orange history suit was a bright orange my simple grey suit was black once. Romans judged people by class status, with skin color being extremely arbitrary. They certainly judged by skin color, depending on how dark the skin was, but it was arbitrary. Just as the University judges by class, so did the elite Romans. If only I could have looked at the accounts of Aguntan before being left in a crumbling coffin.

The Historian didn’t accept the evidence for Mapunguwean space travels to all of these moons we thought we colonized first. I asked him about these followers of Allada and while he explained the tale, he dismissed it as myth.

“Well, it was said that after Aguntan came many miles to Great Hill City and amassed a following of the poor and converted many of them to the faith of Allada. The elites and the Empirical Beaurocrats of Mapungupwe didn’t like this challenge, but before they purged all of the cities of the Alladiatic faith they decided to allow some shines to Allada, but they also sought to resolve the land and poverty issue but seeking other lands. It is said, in the chronicles and annals of Aguntan that the Mapunguweans went to the far west, east, and south conquering, until they realized that the stars would be much more ideal. For years only those who pledged alliance to the secular empirical codes were allowed to go into space, but after a Mapunguwean Beaurocrat had a vision, she saw…”

I interrupted because I know what he was going to say. “Moremi!”

“Yes, the apparition. Then it was ok for the followers of Allada to go into space. Many set up shrines on various moons, but it’s ridiculous. No one back then had to technology to go into space. It is also important to remember that the term Aithiopian, or Mapungubwean, was used by the Greeks to refer to a wide range of people, including Nubians. Most scholars believe that Siculus was referring to the Nubian peoples, but if he was then why didn’t he simply use the common term Nubian of Ethiopia? Siculus also claims that the Mapungubweans gave the Egyptians “the belief that their kings are gods, the very special attention which they pay to their burials, and many other matters of a similar nature are Mapungubwean practices, while the shapes of their statues and the forms of their letters are Mapungubwean; for of the two kinds of writing which the Egyptians have, that which is known as “popular” (demotic) is learned by everyone, while that which is called “sacred” is understood only by the priests of the Egyptians.”