Purple Colour of the Ancients. 2513 



aristocratic beauty of Rome : its colour was no doubt of precisely the 

 same tint as what we call carmine, and the pigment itself answered to 

 the rouge of the present day. Inveighing against the arts to which 

 the females of his time had recourse for the preservation of their 

 fading charms, St. Jerome indignantly exclaims, " Quid facit in facie 

 Christian® purpurissus ? " or, as we would now say, What business 

 has rouge on the face of a female follower of Christ ? (Epist. 10). Of 

 the particular tint produced by the purpurissura, the most explicit 

 evidence may be deduced from numerous passages in the Roman 

 poets. Thus Ovid says, " Conscia purpureus venit in ora pudor" 

 (Tristia, el. 3, v. 70). To translate purpureus pudor as the purple 

 blush would, however, be contrary to what may be daily witnessed in 

 Nature ; and the line must undoubtedly be rendered — the crimson 

 blush arises on the conscious face. The same poet speaks of purpu- 

 rea gence (Amor. el. 4, v. 22): but were this expression to be Eng- 

 lished, and to be understood as the empurpled cheeks, it would indicate 

 a ghastly and unbecoming deformity ; and we need not doubt that the 

 colour known to us by the name of purple would on the cheek of a 

 lady have been no recommendation, but the very reverse, to far worse 

 judges of female beauty than Ovid: it must, indeed, be clear that in 

 this verse purpureus can have no other meaning than crimsoned. 

 The same remark is applicable to a passage from one of the comedies 

 of Plautus : — "Quia istas buccas tarn belle purpurissatas habes:" 

 because you have those cheeks of yours so prettily rouged, — not em- 

 purpled (Trucul. 2, 2, 35). There are other circumstances, from which 

 it may be inferred that the ancients gave the name of purple to what 

 among ourselves is uniformly denominated red. It is believed, for 

 example, that their minium was exactly the same as our modern ver- 

 milion : but, should this point be disputed in words, we have it in our 

 power to look upon an object in nature, to a particular and unchanging 

 portion of which the epithet miniatus or vermilioned is applied by 

 Pliny. The Romans were not acquainted to any great extent with 

 the varied species of the parrot tribe: all that they knew were com- 

 prehended, it is believed, in the modern genus Palseornis ; and the 

 one with which they would seem to have been the most familiar is 

 that which is now known by the name of Palaeornis torquatus, or the 

 rose-ringed parakeet.* There cannot be any doubt, we should imagine, 



* In the vignette to the 19th volume of Sir William Jardine's Naturalist's Li- 

 brary there is a characteristic representation of this bird, from the exquisite pencil of 

 Mr. Swainson. The ring round the neck is of a fine re.l. Your London readers may, 



