Polybian Scuta Design

[Duncan Head]

If they wore red...

The reddened (russata) garment, which the Greeks call Phoenician and we call scarlet, was invented by the Lacedaemonians so as to conceal the blood with a similar color whenever someone was wounded in battle, lest their opponents' spirits rise at the sight. Roman soldiers under the consuls wore this, whence they used to be called russati.

RED CLOAKS OF CANUSIAN WOOL.

Rome more willingly wears  brown cloaks; Gaul prefers red, a colour which pleases children and soldiers.

[Citizen6]

Rome more willingly wears  brown cloaks; Gaul prefers red, a colour which pleases children and soldiers.

Do we have any idea how much latitude there is in the translation of these colour terms? That is, are they literal translations or is it an approximate translation? Orange is a classic example, being named after the fruit which was a late medieval / early Renaissance introduction to Europe. So would Romans for example have classed orange as "red" or as "yellow"?

The question that then arises is would a Roman culturally recognise red / brown in the same way that we do? We are used to colour wheels and colour theory, but given that these concepts are from the Enlightenment, I wonder how the ancients saw colour. I do recall reading somewhere that there was a major emotional aspect to their description of colour which is why the sea, for example, was often described as black when quite obviously it isn't.

[Patrick Waterson]

I think this is going to involve a discussion of dyes of the period and their availability and use ... seas can be 'wine-dark' or any of a number of other shades according to observation and/or poetic taste, but clothing seems to have been pretty much limited to what you could squeeze out of molluscs, madder, etc. so the possibilities were a bit more limited.

If tomb paintings are anything to go by, their colour perception was not too different to ours.  That is my impression, anyway.

[Duncan Head]

Do we have any idea how much latitude there is in the translation of these colour terms?

Well, you can find the original text at (among other places) http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/:

Canusinae rufae

Roma magis fuscis vestitur, Gallia rufis,
     Et placet hic pueris militibusque colos.

So "brown" is fuscus, "red" is rufus. You can then look these up using the Perseus Project's Latin word study tool. Fuscus "dark, swarthy, dusky, tawny"; rufus "red, reddish, of all shades, acc. to Gell. 2, 26, 5", among other things red-haired but also linked to blood.

The "Gell." reference is to Aulus Gellius' discussion of colour in Latin:

WHEN the philosopher Favorinus was on his way to visit the exconsul Marcus Fronto, who was ill with the gout, he wished me also to go with him. And when there at Fronto's, where a number of learned men were present, a discussion took place about colours and their names, to the effect that the shades of colours are manifold, but the names for them are few and indefinite, Favorinus said: "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.

OK?

[Citizen6]

Thanks Duncan. That answer my question most satisfactorily.

So to summarize we can really only divide Roman colour language into a very limited colour wheel as red quite obviously seems to encompass orange, purple, and even dark yellow colours. Which would also suggest that there is even some possible chromatic overlap between the orange end of the "red" capes and "brown", especially as tonal qualities are darkened.

[Erpingham]

Fascinating that the Romans considered gold and saffron as shades of red, whereas to our way of categorising they are clearly yellows.

[Mark G]

The sea is wine dark.

Everyone on this forum should know that, they tell you often enough

[Duncan Head]

Yet no-one knows precisely what it means...

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/20/science/homer-s-sea-wine-dark.html

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/hoffman_01_13/

http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/essays/a-winelike-sea.php?page=all

[Erpingham]

The sea is wine dark.

To Greeks.  To quote from wikipedia entry on the colour blue

"The ancient Greeks classified colours by whether they were light or dark, rather than by their hue. The Greek word for dark blue, kyaneos, could also mean dark green, violet, black or brown. The ancient Greek word for a light blue, glaukos, also could mean light green, grey, or yellow.["

Based on a passage about the Classis Britannica I vaguely recall, the Romans painted their scout ships blue for camouflage, which suggests they thought the sea was blue.

[Citizen6]

Based on a passage about the Classis Britannica I vaguely recall, the Romans painted their scout ships blue for camouflage, which suggests they thought the sea was blue.

I can't speak for the Mediterranean, but where I live painting a ship blue (as we think of it) would make it stand out like dog's bollocks.   

So would it be too controversial then to suggest that we could/should be painting our Roman forces in a variety of browns, reds, pinks, purples, yellows and oranges...all under the epithet of "red".

Hmmm... actual history vs agreed perception of history     

[Duncan Head]

So would it be too controversial then to suggest that we could/should be painting our Roman forces in a variety of browns, reds, pinks, purples, yellows and oranges...all under the epithet of "red".

I wouldn't go quite that far. Lucretius, for instance, treats "saffron" as something other than red (lutea russaque vela et ferrugina - "awnings, saffron, red and dusky blue"), despite what Gellius says, so I'm not at all sure how far into the "yellow" we cxan push the concept of "red".

Isidore links the "russus" colour of soldiers' clothing to the colour of blood; and someone else describes soldiers dressed in the colour of Mars, and Mars is usually shown dressed in red-as-we-know-it. The colour on those of the Dura shields that are red is quite a bright "mainstream" red, too. So if we assume uniform issue, I'd go for a colour within the range of red-as-we're-used to. If we assume Republican citizen-soldiers providing their own red military tunics, then more variety in shade no doubt, but not far enough from "blood-red" to lose the martial connotations.

[Erpingham]

Assuming the clothes were died with madder, this image of the range of possible colours might be useful :

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Naturally_dyed_skeins.jpg

[Patrick Waterson]

I can't speak for the Mediterranean, but where I live painting a ship blue (as we think of it) would make it stand out like dog's bollocks.   

And the sea is a bitch.    Funnily enough, Admiralty camouflage schemes of 1943-45 (after Peter Scott had talked to them) involved painting the upper part of the hull light grey and the lower part blue.

Assuming the clothes were dyed with madder, this image of the range of possible colours might be useful :

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Naturally_dyed_skeins.jpg

Excellent find, Anthony.  I suspect the Romans would incline toward the darker end of the spectrum, probably the example on the right.  Classical cultures seem to have admired uniformity in their contingents and gone to considerable lengths to achieve it.