Tài liệu Gorgias studies in classical and late antiquity 3 - Rachael b. goldman color terms in social and cultural context in ancient rome gorgias press (2013)

Color-Terms in Social and Cultural Context in Ancient Rome Gorgias Studies in Classical and Late Antiquity 3 Gorgias Studies in Classical and Late Antiquity contains monographs and edited volumes on the Greco-Roman world and its transition into Late Antiquity, encompassing political and social structures, knowledge and educational ideals, art, architecture and literature. Color-Terms in Social and Cultural Context in Ancient Rome Rachael B. Goldman 9 34 2013 Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2013 by Gorgias Press LLC All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2013 ‫ܛ‬ 9 ISBN 978-1-61143-914-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Goldman, Rachael. Color-terms in social and cultural context in ancient Rome / by Rachael Goldman. pages cm -- (Gorgias studies in classical and late antiquity ; 3) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-61143-914-4 1. Rome--Social life and customs. 2. Colors--Social aspects--Rome. 3. Sociolinguistics--Rome. 4. Social structure--Rome. I. Title. DG78.G65 2013 306.440937--dc23 2013035963 Printed in the United States of America TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents ..................................................................................... v Acknowledgments .................................................................................. vii Note on Texts, Translations and Abbreviations ................................ ix Introduction .............................................................................................. 1 Different Hues, Different Views .................................................. 1 Modern Approaches to Roman Colors ....................................... 3 A Thematic Approach to the Subject .......................................... 7 Chapter One: Aulus Gellius’ Colorful Digression .............................. 9 The Color Debate: Latin Color Terms ...................................... 10 Greek Color-Terms ....................................................................... 18 Fronto and the Roman Artistic Background ............................ 19 Favorinus and Physiognomy ....................................................... 23 Summary ......................................................................................... 24 Chapter Two: Ancient Dyes: Color Me Beautiful ............................. 25 Purple Dyers ................................................................................... 27 Red Dyers ....................................................................................... 31 Other Dyers .................................................................................... 32 Vitruvian Colors ............................................................................ 33 Summary ......................................................................................... 37 Chapter Three: Colored Clothing: You Are What You Wear ......... 39 Purple Colored Clothing .............................................................. 40 Red Colored Clothing ................................................................... 52 Blue and Green Colored Clothing .............................................. 55 Yellow Colored Clothing.............................................................. 57 White, Gray, Black and Brown.................................................... 62 Pullus ................................................................................................ 65 Summary ......................................................................................... 68 Chapter Four: Clothes Make the Man: Class and Color-Terms ..... 71 Trimalchio the Freedman ............................................................. 71 The Freedman’s Wife.................................................................... 76 v vi COLOR-TERMS IN SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT The Freedman’s Feast................................................................... 79 Freedmen in Poetry ....................................................................... 80 Summary ......................................................................................... 83 Chapter Five: Color Wars: Roman Chariot Teams ........................... 85 The Setting ...................................................................................... 85 The Teams ...................................................................................... 87 The Greens ..................................................................................... 90 The Blues ........................................................................................ 94 The Reds, Whites and Others ..................................................... 95 Epilogue .......................................................................................... 96 Chapter Six: Color Physiognomy: You Are What You Look Like .................................................................................................. 99 Descriptions of Emperors .........................................................100 Descriptions of Ordinary Men ..................................................109 Descriptions of Women .............................................................118 Descriptions of Non-Romans ...................................................125 Gauls, Germans, and Britons ....................................................126 Assyrians, Egyptians, Ethiopians, Etruscans and Indians ....130 Summary .......................................................................................133 Chapter Seven: The Multicolored World of the Romans ..............135 Versicolor ........................................................................................135 Decolor and Decolorare....................................................................141 Discolor ...........................................................................................146 Bicolor..............................................................................................151 Multicolor ........................................................................................152 Omnicolor ........................................................................................154 Unicolor and Concolor .....................................................................155 Summary .......................................................................................160 Conclusions: Did Color-Terms Have an Ancient History? ...........161 Bibliography ..........................................................................................165 Index of Latin Color-Terms ...............................................................175 Index of Classical Works Cited ..........................................................179 General Index........................................................................................187 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book began life as a portion of the my Ph.D. Dissertation written at the City University of New York-Graduate Center, the American Academy in Rome, and Rutgers University. I would like to thank those institutions for access to their facilities and for their financial support. I would especially like to thank the excellent staff of each of these libraries for getting some of most obscure works I could ever dream of. Grants from the Association of Ancient Historians and the Classical Association of Atlantic States also made this work possible. Panels held at the Roman House Workshop at New York University, American Historical Association and the Renaissance Society of America helped clarify and brighten some of the unclear passages. Having supported myself during my graduate study, I would also like to thank the following institutions for allowing me to share all that I know about the ancient world in their classrooms: The College of New Jersey, Adelphi University, Montclair State University, Bronx Community College, The Pratt Institute and Union Community College. Students from my Roman Civilization course helped me form solid ideas about colors and their uses, while students in the Rome and Barbarians course helped defined shades for the non-Roman. The best of colleagues! I would like to extend my thanks to my dissertation advisor, Jennifer T. Roberts, who advised me and graciously took me as her student. Further, I must acknowledge others, whom I also regard to be mentors: Dee L. Clayman, Margaret King, Sarah Covington, Duane W. Roller, Wladislaw Roczniak, Gary Farney, T. Corey Brennan, Cindy Nimchuk, Kaius Tuori, Martin Burke, Ann Moyer, Judith Hallett, Sulochana Asirvatham, Leanne Bablitz, Lisa Mignone, Prudence Jones, Ilaria Marchesi, Sarolta Takacs, Donald Lateiner, Gil Renburg and Karen Kelsky. vii viii COLOR-TERMS IN SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT To my editor, Melonie Schmierer-Lee, who gently guided me throughout this entire process and gave my subject a proper place in history. Many friends and colleagues have listened to my ideas, answered my questions, and provided hospitality and camaraderie; I should like to thank above all: Robin Johnson, who took the responsibility as an editor of all. I cannot think that this book would not have found a proper format. She also kept me calm after my many tantrums. And yes, Robin, I have said it already! To Dr. Keith Jordan, on our many transcontinental phone calls, constantly reassuring me that I was doing the right thing at the right time. A number of other friends kept me sane through the whole process: Adele Pier Puccio, Natalie Bianco, Michael and Natalie Wildermuth, Francesca Vasalle, and Sara Lavallee. Finally, I would like to thank my family, Karen and Gerald Goldman, and my brother, Jonathan, for all of their love and support throughout this process. For them and all, I have certainly brought a new level of color into their life. All errors are my own. Rachael Goldman April 2013 NOTE ON TEXTS, TRANSLATIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS Texts and translations are taken from the Loeb Classical Library, with some minor amendments. Exceptions are the works of Festus, Nonius, Ulpian, Julius Pollux, Pseudo-Aristotle, and Polemo of Laodicea, which are noted in the Bibliography. Abbreviations of journal titles are taken from l’Année philologique. Abbreviations for ancient authors and their works are taken from the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edition. AJA American Journal of Archaeology AJPhil American Journal of Philology ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt CJ The Classical Journal CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum CPh Classical Philology CQ Classical Quarterly CR Classical Review CW The Classical World HSPh Harvard Studies in Classical Philology ILS Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae JDAI Jahrbuch des deutschen archäologischen Instituts TAPhA Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association TAPhS Transactions of the American Philosophical Society TLL Thesaurus Linguae Latinae ZPE Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik ix x COLOR-TERMS IN SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT INTRODUCTION The study of color-terms in the works of Roman writers can illuminate our understanding of their social stratification and mores. Color is a basic cultural building block by which the historian can measure how the Romans saw the world around them. The Romans attached nuanced implications to color-terms which went beyond their literal meaning, using these terms as a form of cultural assessment, defining their social values and order. By using color, they were often making judgments about social class, gender roles, and ethnic groups, and so maintaining the status quo. By analyzing the use of color words in specific contexts, it is possible to derive a greater insight into the Roman understanding of color, and the translator and commentator faced with color categories will be better equipped to appreciate the descriptions at work in such problematic expressions as Juvenal’s viridem thoraca and Vergil’s discolor aura. DIFFERENT HUES, DIFFERENT VIEWS Ancient color-terms can be difficult for us to understand because of the temporal distance between our world and that of antiquity. 1 The experiences and materials that dominated and shaped the ancients’ perceptions are not familiar to citizens of the twenty-first century, who live in a world of synthetic dyes, electric lights and a proliferation of high-tech visual media. On account of their abstract and subjective nature, classical color-terms are difficult to 1 For example, Fletcher (1968) 57 says ‘colour descriptions both in Greek and in Latin tend to be vague;’ Fordyce (1961) 73 says ‘Latin colour-words are difficult to define.’ 1 2 COLOR-TERMS IN SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT understand unless they are anchored to specific objects, such as fabrics and clothing. We recognize that the Romans seemed to be highly aware of the interaction of light and darkness with color. In the absence of modern technology, interiors of houses would have been dimmer than our own, and the light produced by candles and oil lamps was limited and flickering, making the Romans more conscious of the play of light and shade upon various colors. Dyeing fabric was an inconstant process, because the dyes employed were rather impure and the dyeing process was not controlled with modern instruments. As a result there could have been a great variation of hues from one dye lot to another. 2 These material factors may have contributed to apparent differences in the color vocabulary employed by Roman authors when compared with twenty-first century concepts of color. If the colors themselves may have been variable, the colorterms in Latin literature do not show substantial change in context or meaning over time. For example, flammeus, the term to describe the bridal veil worn by women, is used by authors such as Plautus, Vergil, Catullus, Petronius, Pliny the Elder and Aulus Gellius, representing a huge expanse of time and genre. The color-term murex also remained consistent over time, associated with the purple color retrieved from the sea snail, Murex brandaris, reserved specifically for the aristocracy. Speaking for the cultured society under the Antonines in the mid-second century CE, one of the characters in Aulus Gellius’ Attic Nights charges that there are more and better color-terms in Greek literature than there are in Latin, while another character retorts that Latin has a far greater variety.3 Their dialogue poses for the historian of color a useful linguistic debate on color-terminology, and the problems of definition, both for them and for us today. 2 3 See, for instance, Edgeworth (1985) 220; Sebesta (1994b) 73–74. Gell. NA 2.26. INTRODUCTION 3 MODERN APPROACHES TO ROMAN COLORS To excavate the foundation of modern treatments of ancient Roman color, we must return to the first study conducted by Thomas Randolph Price, who was concerned with defining the chromatic range of the terms (such as all the different shades of red) and their deployment in the Vergilian corpus.4 His study represented the first attempt at listing Roman color-terms and their etymological roots. He demonstrated that Vergil used color in all types of descriptions, but he did not categorize the usages of the color-terms and did not attempt to analyze their precise meaning. As Price intended his work merely to bring the subject of color to the forefront, he did not go further than this level of research. The study of Roman color-terms was taken up again by J. André, the French linguist, in his Étude sur les Termes de Couleur dans la Langue Latine.5 André built upon Price’s limited research, but added more color-terms, resulting in a massive concordance that is divided into different color groups or families charting the usage of specific words in different texts. As a comprehensive research tool, his book remains an invaluable source; but since his field of study was so wide, he touches only briefly on social and cultural aspects of colors. Andre’s text should be consulted with caution, as his translations sometimes seem eccentric: for example, he includes puniceus and purpureus in the red family chapter, Le Rouge, though these color-terms have been universally accepted as purple and he has a separate chapter on Le Violet.6 He categorizes spadix as red, even though it is usually translated as rust or brown, and he has a chapter on Le Brun.7 The word lividus is usually translated as whitish, but he places it in the blue category.8 Even pallere, pallidus, and pallor are also normally considered white or pale hues, but here they are categorized in his Le Jaune or yellow section.9 Price (1883). André (1949). 6 Ibid. 88–104. 7 Ibid. 118. Aulus Gellius also includes poeniceus and spadix among terms for red; see Chapter One below. 8 Ibid. 171. 9 Ibid. 139–147. 4 5 4 COLOR-TERMS IN SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT Following André’s method, Neculai V. Baran elaborated on the study of color-terminology in Les Caractéristiques essentielles du vocabulaire chromatique latin.10 He organizes the material in an outline manner, by author and genre rather than by color-term, including many lesser-known Latin works, such as Apuleius’ Florida and Celsus’ scientific writings, and includes some brief references to mosaics and minor arts. Although he discusses color-terms as applied to deities and mythological stories, he does not discuss color-terms as applied to descriptions of ordinary people. Nor does he consider color-terms with prefixes, such as versicolor and discolor. Where his survey succeeds is in his extensive bibliography and notes. From a linguistics standpoint, Berlin and Kay’s Basic Color Terms surveys the etymological development of color-terms in various languages; they devised the phrase ‘color term’ to describe words for colors. 11 More recently, Renato Oniga extends this approach to develop a basic color-terminology for Latin.12 Other scholars have focused on the use of individual colors. 13 Francis Marion Dana’s dissertation, The Ritual Significance of Yellow Among the Romans, examined the religious function of yellow in Roman rituals, especially marriage; however, she confuses various elements of the marriage ceremony and the function of the flammeum, the marriage veil.14 Her use of primary sources is limited, and she does not consider luteus a color-term for yellow; instead she considers it a red hue. Perhaps her greatest contribution to the study of color-terms is her consideration of the colors from the standpoint of gender. Eric Laughton’s two articles on flavus pudor examine the use of the term flavus in writers from Vergil through Baran (1983). Berlin and Kay (1969). 12 Oniga (2007). 13 Several recent studies discuss the development of dyes in modern times. Garfield (2001) gives a focused account of the invention of synthetic chemical dyes in the nineteenth century, and the impact this innovation had on the distribution and diversity of color in the Western world. Greenfield (2005) carefully considers the economic aspects of the production of red dye from the Florentine Renaissance to modern South America. 14 Dana (1919). 10 11 INTRODUCTION 5 the elgiac poets.15 The color that has received the most attention from scholars is purple, purpura; Meyer Reinhold’s The History of Purple as a Status Symbol in Antiquity has become the standard text on the purple dye and trade industry from the Assyrians through the Byzantine Empire.16 Donald Lateiner’s article ‘Blushes and Pallor in Ancient Fiction’ draws attention to the use of the color-terms rubor and pallor; he tabulates the number of times terms for blushing and turning pale appear in both Greek and Latin literature. His survey of the literature shows how non-verbal expressions can be significant in our understanding of ancient peoples.17 Other scholars have focused on the use of color-terms by particular authors. In The Colors of the Aeneid, R.J. Edgeworth charts the frequency of all Vergil’s color-terms, including verb forms as well as adjectives.18 Jacqueline Clarke’s Imagery of Color and Shining in Catullus, Propertius and Horace follows the same format as Edgeworth in her analysis, although she concentrates more on color-terms rather than on the quality of shining.19 Barolsky follows the same method in his article on Ovid’s use of colors in Arion.20 There have been some brief treatments of the social connections between colored materials (particularly purple and gold) and Roman luxuria, and attempts by the state to monitor and control them, for instance Phyllis Culham on the lex Oppia, and Christopher Jones on Graeco-Roman processed colors, 200 BCE–200 CE.21 Kelly Olson’s Dress and the Roman Woman draws attention to elements of color over the Roman woman’s whole life-cycle, particularly in clothing, make-up, hair-coloring and jewelry.22 Elizabeth C. Evans was known for her work on the physiognomic treatises of the second century CE by Polemo and the Pseudo-Aristotelian Laughton (1948) and (1950). Reinhold (1970). 17 Lateiner (1998). 18 Edgeworth (1992). 19 Clarke (2003). This monograph grew out of Clarke’s earlier work (2001), where she offered an analysis of color-usage in Catullus 63. 20 Barolsky (2003). 21 Culham (1982) and (1986); Jones (1999). 22 Olson (2008). 15 16 6 COLOR-TERMS IN SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT school, in which the color-terms used to describe the hair, eyes and complexion are supposed to reveal the inner qualities or ailments of the person described.23 In the last decade there has been a great deal of scholarly interest in the examination of painted Greek and Roman sculpture, with many surprising results. Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway surveys the traces of color on Greek architectural sculpture in Prayers in Stone.24 She discusses the role of paint in making sculpture on buildings more clearly visible to the observer, as well as its function as part of the overall architectural design. Vinzenz Brinkmann’s important texts address the use of polychromy in Greek and Roman sculpture by studying paint samples from a variety of wellknown works, including the Augustus of Prima Porta; a major exhibition in Munich in 2007 included recreations of these works with possible original colors.25 The most recent contribution to the literature is Mark Bradley’s important study, Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome, which examines categories of color in Roman systems of expression and communication.26 Bradley discusses how the words color and colores were understood by Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, and how authors such as Lucretius and Pliny analyzed the optical effects of color; he devotes a complete chapter to the rainbow and its effect on ancient philosophy and science, and another on marble and its colorful qualities in building structures. There are many useful studies of color-terms that focus on periods and cultures other than Greece and Rome. John Gage’s Color and Culture and Color and Meaning trace the history of color from Classical Greece through the twentieth century, principally focusing on appearances in Medieval and Renaissance fine and decorative arts.27 Liza Cleland and Karen Stears organized an archaeologically-based conference, whose proceedings were pubEvans (1935), (1941), (1950) and (1969). Ridgway (1999) 103–142. 25 Brinkmann (1994), (2003) and (2007); see also Bankel and Liverani (2004), Panzanelli (2008). 26 Bradley (2009b). 27 Gage (1993) and (1999). 23 24 INTRODUCTION 7 lished as Colour in the Ancient Mediterranean World, which deals with all aspects of the use of color in the ancient world from Roman Britain to Egypt, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor and North Africa.28 Umberto Eco’s ‘How Culture Conditions the Colours We See’ articulates many of the linguistic and conceptual issues that are present when we try to describe colors, taking into account our cultural background and preconceptions.29 Because of the relative paucity of previous scholarship on color in the Roman world and lack of focus on the precise meaning of color-terms, oversimplified or incorrect translations have been repeated uncritically in literature. Without an understanding of the context of color-terms, the significance ascribed to them by the writers is lost. By examining the color-terms at play in certain texts, we may be able to grasp more readily the interplay among roles of gender, ethnicity, religion, economic and class differences, political affairs, and passions of the day. A THEMATIC APPROACH TO THE SUBJECT Instead of the traditional method of treating the subject by individual color, or chronologically by period, this book will examine the subject of color-terms through thematic chapters. The literary evidence for color-terms does not display a clear chronological development, nor did it seem logical to analyze or discuss color-terms by literary genre or author-based studies, as had been studied previously. It seems more useful to sort the color-terms into subject areas in which they are most frequently found in literature, such as clothing, physiognomy, and associations with particular social classes. These categories generate other fields to investigate: for example, in order to study colored clothing, one must examine the dye industry. Finally, there is a whole category of literary color-terms that deal with the concept of multicoloredness, which have not been considered as a group in previous scholarship. This approach may provide a more productive method for studying Roman attitudes towards color-terms and how they were used. As we shall 28 29 Cleland and Stears (2004). Eco (1985). 8 COLOR-TERMS IN SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT discover, specific color-terms acquired connotations of value — both negative and positive — based on their associations with contemporary social groups. These associations and value judgments appear in Roman literature of both the Republic and the Empire and give us insight into the Roman mind on a variety of important subjects. CHAPTER ONE: AULUS GELLIUS’ COLORFUL DIGRESSION The dialogue in Gellius’ Attic Nights 2.26, a debate between Marcus Cornelius Fronto and Favorinus of Arles concerning the relative merits of Greek and Latin color-terms, is useful for revealing the cultural climate of the Antonines and the attitudes of the educated upper class of Romans towards the use of color-terms in literature, particularly in poetry. 1 The form of this conversation, loosely based upon the Platonic dialogues, may record an actual intellectual debate or it may be fiction; but whether the conversation occurred or not, it demonstrates the importance that Roman intellectuals placed on color-terms, their derivation and meaning. A detailed analysis of this debate, in the order in which Gellius records it, allows us to examine certain difficult passages with greater understanding. The Latin grammarian Aulus Gellius (125 CE–after 180 CE) was particularly interested in capturing conversations and anecdotes reflective of the social climate in the philosophical schools of Athens. The only information about him as a rhetorician and recorder of antiquarian tales is in his Attic Nights, a compilation of stories, mathematical equations (the measurement of Hercules’ foot is the first anecdote in Book One), questions about law, and anything else that interested him during one winter which he spent in 1 The conversation is referenced in passing by commentators on Aulus Gellius: Baldwin (1975) 33; Holford-Strevens (1989) 65–66, (2004) 32, 219; Fögen (2000) 207–209. Bradley (2009) 229–233 discusses it in detail; see also Rowe (1972) 351; Dürbeck (1977) 38–42; Eco (1985) 158–160; Gage (1993) 31. 9