XVIII 



ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORDS CROCUS AND SAFFRON. 



not applied to garments actually dyed with Saffron, they seem to convey the notion 

 of a brilliant glowing colour, like that of flame or glowing embers, though occasionally 

 their exact force is very obscure. Chaeremon, ap. Athenceus, 608, calls the Saffron 

 dye ' sunlike.' — 



KpoKov 0\ 2s ifKi&i&t ess v<f>aoftma 

 irerr\wi> aicui<s tihwXov elaoftop^vmai. 



KpoKonerrXo?, 'Saffron veiled,' is a Homeric epithet of the dawn* used also by Hesiod. 

 Theocritus calls the golden-berried ivy KpoKousJ and Galen uses the phrase /cpo/cos 

 mov of the yolk of an egg. In Aesch. Ag., 1090: — 



eVt Be Ktipci'av tcpafie KpoKojia(p)j-i arayuiv. 



the word KpoKofia<f>r]<i as applied to a blood-drop is exceedingly obscure ; it has 

 been explained, " the blood-drop leaving a pale hue," but how a colour which is 

 Xpvo-avyr}s and ^XiwStjs can be likened to that of a face pale from loss of blood, is 

 not clear. Others translate "the ruddy life-blood." 



The Latin Crocus or Croatia, like the Greek xpoxos, is used both as the 

 name of a flower, and of the Saffron produced from it; no doubt the writers who 

 use Crocus as a flower-name, with the exception, perhaps, of Pliny, would have 

 applied it to man)' other species of Crocus besides C. sativits, perhaps to Colchicum, 

 and even to other less similar bulbous plants. The epithets of the flower Crocus 

 in the poets are usually either too general, or of too doubtful meaning to give the 

 botanist any help. The following are some of the principal passages in which 

 Croats means a flower : — 



Virgil, Georg, iv, 182, croaimque rubentem mentioned as a favourite food of 

 bees. Columella (de Re Rustica, ix, 4) directs it to be planted near the hive to 

 colour and scent the honey. The idea conveyed by the epithet is probably 

 that of 'glow,' 'blaze,' rather than of any definite colour; Lucretius (iv, 405) uses 

 the adjective ruber, red, of a ray of the sun, Ovid (M. xi, 368), of a flame; but 

 both ntbens and ruber are also used of the ' purple ' dye obtained from shell-fish, 

 the exact colour of which is not now certainly known (Lucretius, ii, 35 ; Virgil, 

 Eel. iv, 43), or of blood (Horace, Ode, 3, 13, 7). In the present passage ntbens 

 is commonly explained as referring to the fiery colour of the stigmata. I venture 

 to suggest that Virgil, though speaking of the flower, had present to his mind's 

 eye the colour of the Saffron dye, with which he was doubtless much more familiar ; 

 this would be quite in Virgil's manner. Is it even possible that a golden-flowered 

 Crocus may have been grown in Italy as an ornamental plant in Virgil's day ? 



Iliad, viii, I ; xix, I, t Id., i, 31. 



