Redletter N°2
Karlsruhe, 26. Juni 2020, 30°C
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SPEAKING LATIN (AND GREEK) ABOUT COLOURS
A discussion about colours and their names
by Moritz Appich, Bruno Jacoby & Johanna Schäfer
with
FAVORINUS, a philosopher
MARCUS FRONTO, an ex-consul (who is ill with the gout)
UMBERTO ECO, an Italian polymath
[UE is reading Book II of Aulus Gellius’s Noctes Acticaea Latin encyclopedia of the second century AD]
[Enter Favorinus and Marcus Fronto, who looks sick.]
F
More distinctions of colour are detected by the eye than are expressed by words and terms.
For leaving out of account other incongruities, your simple colours, red (rufus) and green (viridis),
have single names, but many different shades. And that poverty in names I find more pronounced in Latin than in Greek.
For the colour red (rufus) does in fact get its name from redness, but although fire is one kind of red,
blood another, purple another, saffron another, and gold still another, yet the Latin tongue does not
indicate these special varieties of red by separate and individual words, but includes them all under the one term rubor,
except in so far as it borrows names from the things themselves, and calls anything
'fiery,' 'flaming,' 'blood-red,' 'saffron', 'purple' and 'golden.' For russus and ruber are no doubt derived from rufus,
and do not indicate all its special varieties, but ξανθός and ἐρυθρός and πυρρός and κιρρός and φοῖνιξ
seem to mark certain differences in the colour red, either intensifying it or making it lighter, or qualifying it by the
admixture of some shade.
MF
I do not deny that the Greek language, which you seem to prefer, is richer and more copious than ours;
but nevertheless in naming these colours of which you have just spoken we are not quite so badly off
as you think. For russus and ruber, which you have just mentioned, are not the only words that denote the colour
red, but we have others also, more numerous than those which you have quoted from the Greek. For fulvus, flavus,
rubius, poeniceus, rutilus, luteus and spadix are names of the colour red, which either brighten it (making it
fiery, as it were), or combine it with green, or darken it with black, or make it luminous by a slight addition
of gleaming white. For poeniceus which you call φοῖνιξ in Greek, belongs to our language, and rutilus and spadix,
a synonym of poeniceus which is taken over into Latin from the Greek, indicate a rich, gleaming shade of red like
that of the fruit of the palm-tree when it is not fully ripened by the sun. And from this spadix and poeniceus get
their name; for spadix in Doric is applied to a branch torn from a palm-tree along with its fruit. But the colour fulvus
seems to be a mixture of red and green, in which sometimes green predominates, sometimes red. Thus the poet who was most
careful in his choice of words applies fulvus to an eagle, to jasper, to fur caps, to gold, to sand, and to a lion; and so
Ennius in his Annals uses fulvus of air. Flavus on the other hand seems to be compounded of green and red and white; thus
Virgil speaks of golden hair as flava and applies that adjective also to the leaves of the olive, which I see surprises some;
and thus, much earlier, Pacuvius called water flava and dust fulvus.
[UE begins flipping pages, increasingly inpatient.]
UE
I had suspected that Latin did not clearly distinguish blue from green, but you give the impression that Latin users did not even distinguish blue-green from red.
MF [ignoring UE]
Now, rubidus is a darker red and with a larger admixture of black; luteus , on the other hand, is a more diluted red, and from this dilution its name too seems to be derived. Therefore, my dear Favorinus, the shades of red have no more names in Greek than with us.
[F seems impressed. Nods enthusiastically and starts quoting more poetry in the background.]
UE
To deal with colours by making recourse to a text of this ancient period is rather challenging. We are facing linguistic terms for colours, but we do not know what chromatic effects these words refer to. These are not cases of poetic invention. On the contrary, those two propose all these cases as examples of the most correct and precise use of language.
UE
Thus the puzzle we are faced with is neither a psychological nor an aesthetic one: it is a cultural one, and as such it is filtered through a linguistic system. We are dealing with verbal language insofar as it conveys notions about visual experiences. Verbal language is used to make the non-verbal experience recognizable, speakable, and effable.
0
Translation into written text seems a very imprecise way of communicating a visual impression. Like eliminating a whole dimension from the first impression, almost like a black and white copy of a colourful image.
| rufus (adj.) | red; red-haired |
| rubor (n.) | redness; blush; modesty, shame, disgrace |
| russus (adj.) | red; red-haired |
| ruber (adj.) | red, ruddy, painted red; Rubrum Mare = Red Sea/ Persian Gulf |
| fulvus (adj.) | red; green; tawny, reddish yellow; the colour of eagles, jasper, fur caps, gold, sand, lions, air and dust |
| flavus (adj.) | red; green; golden, golden-haired; the colour of the leaves of the olive, water |
| rubius [sic.] (adj.) | red (esp. of oxen/domestic animals), red type of wheat |
| poeniceus (adj.) | Phoenician |
| rutilus (adj.) | red, golden red, reddish yellow |
| luteus (adj.) | yellow; of mud or clay; saffron; good for nothing |
| spadix (adj.) | red; chestnut-coloured; a branche torn from a palm-tree along with its fruit |
>> Thanks to Marcel Strauß for recommending Umberto Eco's The Colors We See .