Cambridge University Press
9780521110426 - Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome - By Mark Bradley
Excerpt

Introduction

What colour is flauus?

Hippolyte, sic est: Thesei uultus amo
illos priores quos tulit quondam puer,
cum prima puras barba signaret genas
. . .
quis tum ille fulsit! presserant uittae comam
et ora flauus tenera tinguebat pudor.

Yes, Hippolytus: Theseus’ face I love, those looks he had long ago as a boy, when his first beard signalled his pure cheeks . . . Then how he shone! Headbands encircled his hair, and yellow shame (flauus pudor) tinged his tender face.

Seneca, Phaedra 646–9, 651–2

candida uestis erat, praecincti flore capilli,
flaua uerecundus tinxerat ora rubor.

Shining white was your clothing, your locks were bound round with flowers, a modest blush (rubor) had tinged your yellow cheeks (flaua ora).

Ovid, Heroides 4.71–21
Sixty years ago, Eric Laughton drew attention to a problem that occasionally arose in the translation of the Latin colour term flauus.2 This is a term that dictionaries conventionally describe as a loose equivalent of our category ‘yellow’.3 Laughton however argued that ‘yellow’ was an altogether unsatisfactory translation for flauus pudor and flaua ora in the contexts cited above, but instead they referred exclusively and unambiguously to the ‘blond’
hair that marked out the cheeks of adolescent boys. ‘Blushing modesty’ and the like, which had been proposed for flauus pudor by various translators, as well as the Thesaurus and Lewis and Short, was incorrect.4 The Thesaurus had interpreted Ovid’s flaua ora in the same way, by taking flaua proleptically after tinxerat (so the blush had ‘tinged his face yellow’). Laughton’s solution was to claim that the Thesaurus was wrong to connect flauus with the skin, and that the category primarily denoted (or suggested) blond hair.5 This object-specific reading was, he argued, sustained by such examples as Virgil’s Clytius whose cheeks are sprouting their first blond hairs (‘flauentem prima lanugine malas / . . . Clytium’, Aeneid 10.324–5) and soldiers in Silius Italicus whose cheeks rub against helmets before they are even marked by the first blond down (‘galeaque teruntur / nondum signatae flaua lanugine malae’, Punica 2.318–19), where the connection with the blond lanugo is explicitly formulated. So deep-seated was this connection that the Thesaurus’ other examples of alleged ‘yellow skin’ (flaua cutis) could not stand: thus, Valerius Maximus’ description of uir flaui coloris (1.7.ext.6), Seneca’s angry flaui rubentesque (De Ira 2.19.5) and his ethnic group flaui (Epistle 58.12) immediately evoke blond hair.6 A further example (Ovid, Amores 2.4.39) compares a ‘yellow girl’ (flaua puella) to a ‘pale girl’ (candida puella) and girls who have a ‘swarthy colour’ (fuscus color): here too flauus must denote the ‘blond’.7 This could be corroborated by various examples of Greek ‘yellow’ (xanthos) from the Greek Anthology.8 Although Laughton’s correction of this linguistic
mistake has been – with some exceptions – accepted and reflected in later translations, commentaries and dictionaries,9 the important ramifications that his observations hold for the study of colour in Greco-Roman culture still remain, after sixty years, to be fully exploited.

In his 1950 article, Laughton posited that flauus should be understood as ‘blond’ because it (along with the Greek category xanthos) was a classic epithet of heroines and goddesses in Greek and Roman verse, as well as freshly bearded adolescent males.10 This argument that it was the literary context that made flauus ‘blond’ was a diversion from his original, bolder, line that one should position this category linguistically and conceptually as a primary designator of blond hair. That original proposal had big implications: ‘blond’ should come first in our dictionaries – with ‘yellow’ as a secondary category whenever flauus was used to refer to something that was not hair, such as gold, corn or sand. Laughton had put his finger on an important cultural pattern. With this key semiotic rearrangement (rather than a mere literary conjecture), the Roman reader would have no doubt to what flauus pudor, flaua ora and flaua puella referred.

However, one would be wrong to claim that the simple rule flauus = blond would resolve all the difficulties surrounding this category. Although it seems certain that the Thesaurus incorrectly proposed ‘skin colour’ as one of the semiotic registers for flauus, there is an extensive and diverse list of physical contexts which employ flauus, where ‘blond’ does not appear to work. The Thesaurus finds two main areas for application of flauus: first,


where it represents the Greek glaukos in referring to the sparkle of moving water (de nitore scintillanti aquae commotae) or to the underside of olive leaves (de foliis oliuae a colore partis inferioris); second, where it imitates Greek xanthos or purros. This second usage is divided into six subject categories: (1) ash/sand/mud/dust; (2) honey/wax; (3) hair; (4) ripe corn; (5) gold; (6) skin; along with a seventh category for one-offs such as wedding bonds (uincula), bile and wine.

The two semantic categories in which flauus appears to pick up glaukos are poorly represented, and complicated. The first category, in which flauus describes disturbed water, is surmised from two difficult fragments of early Latin verse, one depicting ships sweeping over the ‘yellow marble’ (flauum marmor) of the sea, and the other describing a ritual washing in ‘yellow water’ (flaua lympha).11 Both fragments are preserved only because they presented a visual puzzle for Aulus Gellius’ imaginative discussion of colour terms at Noctes Atticae 2.26 (see below pp. 229–33). The second area where flauus = glaukos – the underside of olive trees – is likewise an individual poetic peculiarity, also debated in the Gellius passage: Virgil Aeneid 5.309 describes Aeneas’ promise of an olive wreath to the contest-winners – ‘their heads will be crowned by the yellow olive’ (flauaque caput nectentur oliua). Several interpretations have been proposed, including ‘pale green’, allusions to yellow pollen and the reflection of yellow sunlight; a more likely explanation is that Virgil was suggesting a metaphor where olive leaves could be made to resemble hair.12 The Thesaurusglaukos category, then, is too sparse and too problematic (even for ancient interpreters) to stand as an acceptable register of flauus.


The manifold instances where flauus represents the Greek categories xanthos/purros, on the other hand, cannot be so easily dismissed. Flaua harena (‘yellow sand’) was a fairly regular association in Latin verse,13 and Tiber (along with other rivers) earned the epithet flauus – although divine personification, with the characteristic blond hair of divinities, may be implied.14 Honey is often described as flauus.15 So too wax (but only in Ovid’s Metamorphoses).16 Corn and cornfields several times take this category – although one detects a poetic allusion to blond hair.17 Flauum aurum (‘yellow gold’) was a regular chromatic label: the beautified Aeneas resembles Parian marble set with flauum aurum and Martial could describe gold coins as flaua moneta, and gold dishes as flaua chrysendeta.18 Elsewhere, in a poem packed with material metaphor, he claims true electrum shines less than the ‘yellow metal’: minus flauo metallo, 8.50.5 – just as fine silver surpasses ‘snow-white ivory’, niueum ebur. Propertius could describe the unique stone chrysolithos as possessing a ‘yellow light’ (flauum lumen, 2.16.44), and Statius could imaginatively describe Numidian marble quarries as flaua metalla (Siluae 1.5.36).

The Thesaurus’ one-offs, then, point to the possibility of a more flexible use of flauus = ‘yellow’. Tibullus describes as flaua uincula the durable bonds of marriage (2.2.18); one commentator suggests this might allude to chains of gold, although he ends (as most commentators do) by connecting it to a far more general register


of ‘yellow’ in the Roman wedding ceremony.19 Ovid mentions flaua pyrethra (chamomile, Ars Amatoria 2.418) and flaua liba (wheatcakes, Fasti 4.476). Columella (4.30.4) talks of the Greek willow as possessing a flauus color (other types are purpureus and rutilus). Statius connects the category to clothes (flaui amictus, Silvae 2.3.16) and grapes (Thebaid 5.269 – but here as a wreath).20 These examples demonstrate that flauus could be (with a certain amount of imaginative poetic flair) transferred to objects possessing broadly the same wavelength, where ‘yellow’ constitutes a more or less satisfactory translation. The same patterns occur with the use of the verbs flaueo and flauesco (particularly the participles flauens and flauescens which denote especially the movement of hair/corn/water).21 However, the Thesaurus’ category de crinibus (referring to hair) accounts for more than half the total references to flauus and – particularly when the skin category de cutis humanae colore has been correctly integrated into it – contains the large majority of all the direct prosaic uses of flauus.22 This is evidence enough, it seems, both to reinstate ‘blond’ as the primary meaning of flauus, and to recognise that tentative efforts were in place in the educated metropolitan elite literature of the early Empire to extend this color beyond the blond. The issue that requires examination by both the philologist and the intellectual historian is the nature of this interface between the object and how it looks, and the question of when, how and why an object’s natural color could be transferred to other objects outside the term’s semantic range.


Flauus is by no means an isolated case. The adjectives uiridis and uirens (‘green’) most commonly described the healthy crops and shrubs of Roman agriculture and horticulture, or the rich verdure of the Italian countryside.23 Vitruvius, for example, discussing urban architectural design, advocates ‘green spaces’ (uiridia) because of the healthy sensation they bestow upon the viewer (5.9.5).24 Viridis, however, is one of those Latin colour terms which stands in our dictionaries somewhat awkwardly on the line between representing our colour ‘green’ and the quality ‘vigorous’. Most dictionaries aim to separate the two loosely: it seems incompatible with our idea of colour, for example, that Gellius could describe a strong and vigorous sound, such as the letter ‘H’, as uiridis.25 Columella talks about the green taste of olives, and others describe the oil of the freshest varieties as uiride.26 Pliny advises that seeds be sown under a ‘green sky’ (uiride caelum) – not literally ‘green’ of course, but clear and fresh and conducive to germination.27 Similarly, it hardly seems plausible that Virgil’s Euryalus, cut down in his ‘uiridis’ youth was in any real sense ‘green’, nor the cheeks of children in Statius, nor the flame which Horace pictures


spouting out of Mount Etna.28 The blood of Seneca’s Tiresias could be (figuratively speaking) uiridis, as could the ‘ripe’ old age of Virgil’s Charon.29 The list goes on, a series of colour puzzles that have caught the interest of generations of scholars. These examples, however, are not just anomalies: uiridis was ‘verdant’. Just as flauus was the property of blond hair, uiridis was the property of plants and leaves, and much more than just what colour they were.30 When Virgil described the growth of trees and grass (arborei fetus alibi, atque iniussa uirescunt / gramina), there was no sense in separating the ‘green’ and the ‘grow’.31 To describe, think of, experience uiridis for a Roman was to engage in a conceptual world of cultivation and growing.32

Like flauus, however, uiridis could break beyond the semantic range of ‘verdant’ (and so, in a sense, become a ‘colour’). Outside verdure, uiridis was most commonly used to denote ‘green’ rocks, earths and minerals, particularly emeralds – presumably because


they had a similar wavelength.33 A Roman could describe the parrot – something of a rare visual treat – as uiridis.34 This category could also be used, with a certain degree of cultural sneering, to evoke the faces of woad-painted Britons,35 madmen,36 and those who were looking unwell or disorientated.37 Viridis, then, could (like flauus) be extended beyond the object which it most properly described.

One final example: the category caeruleus, which evoked the appearance of deep sea or copious waters. One of Rome’s biggest aqueducts, a great Claudian technical feat which brought thousands of gallons of fresh water into the capital from across Italy, brought water to the fons Caerulea, a deep reservoir so called (Frontinus tells us) from its similitudo – to the sea.38 The Thesaurus, however, like other dictionaries, considers caeruleus to be derived from caelum, and sets ‘sky-blue’ as its first and primary meaning. Two early Latin verse fragments indeed appear to set this category in the


sky, and several later poets follow suit.39 The equation caeruleus = ‘sky-blue’, however, is not correct.40 Many of these instances use caeruleus explicitly as the property of a sky raining heavily, or heavens about to open. Others are implicit. In the Georgics, for example, Virgil describes as caeruleus color the colour of the sun when it is about to deliver rain (pluuiam denuntiat).41 Several references describe stars that herald rain.42 Caeruleus could denote storm-clouds,43 and marked out the most watery parts of the rainbow (see below pp. 40–1). It did not, however, describe the clear blue sky.44 Like the ‘blond’ entry of the Thesaurus’ ‘flauus’, the semantic section ‘de aqua et eius incolis’ (water and those that live in it) forms by far the largest subject category under the entry ‘caeruleus’. This was the property of deep, moving water, and all the qualities and associations it evoked.45 In Aeneid 8, Tiber introduces himself as caeruleus Thybris (64).46 In a Senecan tragedy, caerula Crete denoted not a blue island, but an island associated with, or surrounded by, deep waters.47 The substantive caerula was regularly used to describe ‘the deep’,48 and this was what one would expect the sea to look like.49




© Cambridge University Press