BLACKS IN ANTIQUITY: by SNOWDEN Jr., Frank M.; [FYFE, Christopher]: - 1971. Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience.

Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press., 1971.. Third printing. Publisher's original pictorial card wrappers. Illustrated with black and white photographs throughout. xxii, 364pp. WITH: 2pp. typed copy letter to Snowden from Christopher Fyfe; 3pp. manuscript ink letter from Snowden in reply, signed on the final page, on Howard University headed notepaper; three contemporary reviews of the book sent by Snowden to Fyfe (as per his letter); and three small sheets of pencil notes/page numbers by Fyfe concerning the book, all loosely laid in. A good copy, the binding firm with fading and creasing to the spine and a little wear to the extremities. The contents remain in very good order and clean throughout. The seminal work by the American historian and Distinguished Professor emeritus of classics at Howard University, Frank M. Snowden Jr. (1911-2007), best known for his studies of the lives and experiences of black people in classical antiquity.

The present copy contains correspondence between Snowden and the Scottish historian Christopher Fyfe (1920-2008), best known for his work on the history of Sierra Leone. In his letter, Fyfe enthuses about Snowden's groundbreaking work ("You have spelt out lucidly and unequivocally something I had suspected but was in no position to prove - that the Greeks and Romans did not consider a black skin a mark of inherent inferiority. In so doing you have put the whole world of scholarship (not to mention the world generally) deeply in your debt"), before moving on to ask some more probing academic questions and contestations. Snowden's three-page reply provides an in-depth reply to these queries.