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Comment by jaredwiener | Hacker News Reader

FTA (or at least a link in it) - Macrinus was born in Africa. https://www.worldhistory.org/Macrinus/

Lots of Romans were born in Africa, Rome conquered North Africa towards the end of the republic era.

Yeah but it also says "Macrinus was a Moor by birth."

Macrinus was descended from Berbers, who generally consider themselves to be white. Moor is what christians called Muslim North Africans, a concept that was neither an ethnicity, nor in existence at the time of Macrinus' birth.

Moor is accurate here because Macrinus was born in Mauretania. No relation to the much later "Moors" of Muslim North Africa, or to the modern nation of Mauritania.

I don't know what the Mauri looked like, but probably not like Italians, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of them had dark skin. The same website thinks that emperor looked like this: https://www.worldhistory.org/image/13005/macrinus-facial-rec... and if so, Denzel Washington's portrayal looks pretty good https://i0.wp.com/www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07...

This doesn't look like the Netflix African Cleopatra situation. She was Greek IRL, which is actually interesting for anyone who didn't know about the Ptolemaic dynasty, and it's relevant because even today the Coptic minority in Egypt is (sorta) Greek.

The black cleopatra was a historically accurate recreation as well (according to the people that made the show that is).

Amazighs Algerians are an ethnic group that exists today, you can google them yourself to see how close they look to Denzel Washington.

The website I linked wasn't the creator of the show. Modern Berbers are post Arab Conquests, so I wouldn't expect them to look similar to ancient Mauri.

> FTA (or at least a link in it) - Macrinus was born in Africa.

Just because he was born in africa doesn't mean he is black or 'african'. Elon Musk was born in africa too but nobody would claim he is a black man.

How would you defend against an accusation that you seem to prefer the historically accurate version of events that allows for the most white characters?

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