They are PERCEIVED as white, even though Rome was a Mediterranean empire, that was highly diverse. It’s considered “white” because Europeans in the modern era saw it as the “precursor” to their own empires. It was not, however, except for what influence they took from Rome or whatever meaning they imposed on Roman history to justify their own conquest of people they considered less civilized (which they defined, in part by race, which they saw as a scientific fact, not a social construct).
