Severus has been acclaimed as 'the black emperor'. The fact that Severus was African has been cited as evidence that Rome was colourblind, free of racism a genuinely multicultural commonwealth. Septimius Severus was no more 'black' than Julius Caesar. Politically, culturally and racially, he was part of the broad Mediterranean elite that ruled the Roman Empire. Just as the blood of Etruscans and Samnites flowed in the veins of Italian nobles (like Augustus or Vespasian), and that of Celts and Iberians in those of Spanish ones (like Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus), so did the blood of Berbers and Carthaginians flow in the veins of an African noble like Severus.
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Neil Faulkner, in Rome: empire of the eagles, Pearson Education, 2008, p.244Septimius Severus
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Of colonial heritage, Severus was undoubtedly a mixture of Punic, Berber and Roman blood.
Septimius Severus
I have Russian, German, Spanish, Italian, French and Ethiopian blood in my veins.
Peter Ustinov
Augustine, the North African of Berber descent, is today the spiritual father of multitudes who are remote indeed from him racially, politically, and culturally.
Augustine of Hippo
After all there is throughout this world so far as man is concerned but a single race - the human race, kept alive by one common blood, the human blood. All other talk is at best provisional, a makeshift and only relatively true. (...) Even as it is, not even the aborigines of the Andamans are without some sprinkling of the so-called Aryan blood in their veins and vice-versa. Truly speaking all that one can claim is that one has the blood of all mankind in one’s veins. The fundamental unity of man from pole to pole is true, all else only relatively so.
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar
He was himself a true African. Indeed, we may say he was an African first and a Roman afterwards, since, in spite his genuine loyalty towards the Empire,he shows none of the specifically Roman patriotism which marks Ambrose or Prudentius.
Augustine of Hippo
Severus, Septimius
Sevigne, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal
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