Sub Saharan Africans in Roman army

[MD]

Sub-saharan Africans could have entered the empire via the Nile valley and Egypt, and many of them clearly did - references to Aethiopians in Roman literature, and in art (probably including the blue glass head shown above), demonstrate this. But they would not have been common..

The other two principle trade routes with south saharan Africa should not be dismissed. Black people could also have entered the Empire either via the red sea ports or through the central sahara.

Graeco-Roman merchants traded with Aksum and further down the coast up to modern Tanzania, or at least Somalia via the red sea since the early empire. The periplus of the Erythraean Sea explicitly mentions "slaves of the better sort, which are brought to egypt in increasing numbers" from Opone in modern Somalia.

The research done in Fezzanof in the last decade seems to indicate that there was also some trans saharan trade through the Garamante kingdom. Ptolemy even mentions two expeditions by Romans (Septimius Flaccus and Julius Maternus) from Leptis Magna to sub saharan Africa.

Also the Roman controlled dodecaschoenus (lower Nubia) already has a very black population and the units there recruited locally.