ssshhhh it will destroy his nordic, WASP's fantasy
I don't think he really thinks that, Nordic is a bit too much.
But anyways for evidence that Romans were more or less as swarthy as Italians you just need to look at mosaics/paintings and genetic analysis.
Moorish invasions did nothing to fuck up the gene pool? Sicilians and southern Italians haven’t been considered “white” since very very recently.
from the 1880s to mid-1920 s, when Southern Italian immigration was the largest and least desired immigrants to flow into the country, they did indeed experience many of the harsh and racial laws defined by the Jim Crow codes of the Southern States. In Italians in that era made up over 40% of the “white “ lynching population and the largest lynching in American history happened in New Orleans when 11 Italians were hunged by a mob of over 4000 Anglo Saxon Southern Gentry.
I didn't say that.
I said they looked 'largely' the same, and it's true.
There are three points i want to address.
1)They didn't look like Germans for one we know that from their own words so from that we can deduce from that that they were Med in appearance or at least similar.
2)From their mosaics/paintings it's also plain to see they were in appearance Med looking.
There’s a famous fresco from Pompeii dating to 1 century, the Portrait of Terentius Neo, which shows a prominent resident of Pompeii and his wife:
This is just one example out of many.
View: https://www.pinterest.com/sereneldy/pompeii-frescos/
3) Genetic and facial analysis has also shown that they were close to Italians and Med people in general.
Here's a facial reconstruction of a Roman nobleman from Ceaser's time.
Some facts :
-Skin whitening make up was common in Ancient Rome as pale complexion was not the natural skin color of the Romans.
Cosmetics in Ancient Rome - Wikipedia
-Romans gave nicknames which would occasionally turn into cognomina like Flavus (blondie), Ahenobarbus (red bearded), Niger, etc, a practice which only makes sense if the population looked Mediterranean. It would be fairly strange to nickname someone the blond in a Scandinavian nation, for example, as most of the Scandinavian population are blond.
-After the fall of Rome, Southern arrivals into Italy were Arabs in Sicily, and Byzantines (Greeks). Arabs stayed about one century in Sicily, but their numbers are still debated. Arabs and (later) Byzantines were expelled, or killed, many left (especially Arabs refusing to converting to Christianity) but some remained.
-There were intermarriages with Germanic people.
Conclusion :
The Ancient Romans looked more or less like in the pictures above with a stereotypical Mediterranean complexion (More tanned than Scandinavians, dark eyes/hair).
