Purple Colour of the Ancients. 2507 



more early ages for the robes of kings, and for the most solemn pur- 

 poses of heathen worship. We allude to the double-dyed purple of 

 Tyre. The richness and beauty of this famed colour were owing 

 principally to the skill of the dyers in the city now mentioned, and 

 partly to the excellence of the materials of which they had the com- 

 mand. It was the product, not of a vegetable, but of an invertebrate 

 animal belonging to the division Mollusca. Discoveries of a recent 

 date have indeed proved, in the most conclusive manner, that it was 

 obtained from the juice in a small vein or sac, situated in the throat 

 of the Murex trunculus of Linneus and Lamarck. It is said that one 

 drop only of this precious liquid was all that could be got from each 

 individual animal. When it was wished to produce the most brilliant 

 and costly dye which art could exhibit, the juice of which we are 

 speaking was used in conjunction with that which was procured from 

 other shell-fish belonging to the genus Buccinum. This genus was 

 so named either from the species of which it is composed having a 

 resemblance to a trumpet {Buccinum), or to the human cheek when 

 inflated (Bucca)* They were met with in the clefts and fissures of 

 rocks, whereas the Murex, or proper purpura, had to be fished up 

 from the ocean ; and on this account it had sometimes given to it the 

 name of Pelagia, from the Greek word which signifies the sea. The 

 wool to which this gorgeous purple was imparted was uniformly of 

 fhe finest quality, and was, in all likelihood, purchased from the No- 

 mad or shepherd tribes, which abounded in the vicinity of Tyre. The 

 colour itself was of a highly durable character. In proof of this we 

 are told by Plutarch, that, on making himself master of Susa,f in 

 which was the palace of the Persian kings, Alexander the Great found 

 in the wardrobe — so to speak — of Darius, his amiable but discomfited 

 adversary, no fewer than five thousand talents 1 ! worth of purple of 



* It is remarked by Pennant that Buccinum Lapillus produces a purple dye of a 

 nature analogous to that of the ancients. This shell-fish is found in abundance on 

 certain parts of our own shores, and in the same kind of locality as the Buccinum of 

 the ancients. So far back as 1684, Mr. William Cole, of Bristol, produced a fine 

 purple dye from a white vein in the head of this animal. He describes minutely the 

 whole process which he went through. The colour in the last stage was, in his own 

 words, " a fair bright crimson." (' Penny Cyclopaedia,' ix. 454). 



f The ruins of this ancient city are, according to Major Kawlinson, still to be 

 seen at Sus, in Khusistan. 



% If, as is most probable, the Attic talent is here meant, and if that talent was 

 equal, as is believed to have been the case, to £243 15s. of our present money, the 

 value of the whole purple cloth thus laid up must have amounted to the enormous 

 sum of £1,218,750. 



