Edited sentence: " Silius Italicus, an early writer around the beginning of the Christian era, describes the Maures as "Nigra" or Black."According to at least a dozen different Greek and Byzantine (neo Roman) writers, from the first to sixth century A."In one of Martials writings (Satire VI) around the same era we read the phrase "woolly hair like a Moor."Most of us are not aware that the peoples whom the classical Greeks and Roman historians called Berber were "Black" and affiliated with the then contemporary peoples of the East African area., the indigenous Berber populations whom they called Mauri or "Moors" were a "Black-skinned," war-like, nomadic and predatory population stretching from the borders of Egypt to Morocco.Corrippus, a 6th century historian in his Johannid comedy speaks of their "facies nigroque colorus" and of their Blackness as "horrida" or "horrifying" 7 Procoppius, another 6th century Byzantine historian, says the Moors (Maurasioi) were a people composed of a number "Black-skinned" tribes who had gained domination over all of North Africa after the period of the vandals ascendancy in Africa.It was such populations that in large measure comprised the Moorish people, but because of the attribute of Blackness which sharply distinguished them from the bulk of the European people, the word came to be generally used by Europeans to describe persons of Black complexion in general.Prior to this period of time, all accounts of the ethnicity of Moors attested to the their African ethnicity.There is much controversy surrounding the ethnicity of the ancient Moors as depicted by the 19th century  Eurocentric Scholars