2508 Purple Colour- of the Ancients. 



Hermione.* It had been laid up there for 190 years, and, nevertheless, 

 it still retained, in all their freshness, its glossy and shining qualities : 

 and the cause assigned to the conqueror for this remarkable fact was 

 the circumstance, that the dyeing of the purple had been completed 

 by means of honey, and that the shining lustre had been communi- 

 cated by the application of purified olive oil (di elaiou leukou — Plu- 

 tarchi opera: Francofurti 1595, fol., vol. i. p. 686). This passage, as 

 well as some from other authors, would seem to indicate that the royal 

 purple of antiquity had, as one of its peculiar characteristics, a cer- 

 tain play of colours, such, perhaps, in some measure, as what we see 

 in our own times in shot silk ; and, among the works of Nature, in 

 the neck of the pigeon, and — to a greater and still more beautiful ex- 

 tent — in the metallic-like plumage of the African thrush or grackle 

 (Lamprotornis rufipennis) . Of Tyrian cloth thus double-dyed, it is 

 said by Pliny : — " libra denariis mille non poterat emi," (Lib. 9, c. 39) : 

 a pound weight of it could not be bought for a thousand denarii, that 

 is, for £ 35 8*. 4d. of our present money, reckoning the denarius — as 

 the most accurate numismatologists are inclined to do-— at S^d. 

 (Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, p. 325). 



It is interesting to have some definite idea in regard to this, and to 

 other shades of purple, which were celebrated in the ages of antiquity. 

 It is very evident, however, that words, merely as such, cannot, on a 

 subject of this description, communicate to our mind any precise, 

 distinct and lasting perceptions : but if there are objects and appear- 

 ances in nature to which these colours are likened by ancient writers, 

 and if we ourselves have the power of beholding these objects and 

 appearances in the same circumstances that they did, we shall be en- 

 abled, in this manner, to look on several of the identical shades of the 

 generic term purpura, which the Romans and others were in the cus- 

 tom of admiring. On this point our greatest and principal authority 

 must be Pliny, whose work on Natural History is an extraordinary as- 

 semblage of facts and observations, mixed up, as was to be expected, 

 with the numerous and frequently the ludicrous fables, which were 

 current at a period when physical science could scarcely be said to 

 have made its appearance. In respect to the Tyrian dye, of which 

 mention has already been made, he has, among many other, the 



* Hermione was a city of Peloponnesus (Morea), on the northern shore and to- 

 wards the eastern point of the Sinus Argolicus (Nauplia gulf). The purple, for which 

 it was (anions, is supposed to have heen obtained from the Murcx truneulus, modified 

 perhaps by locality. 



