σιγαλόεις, glossy, like σίαλος, or fat; and μαρμάρεος, applied
_a._ to a web, Il. iii. 126.
_b._ to the Ægis, Il. xvii. 594.
_c._ to the sea, Il. xiv. 273.
_d._ to the rim of the Shield, Il. xviii. 480.
We have also the μαρμαρυγαὶ ποδῶν (Od. viii. 265), or twinkling of the
feet in the dance: and the verb μαρμαίρω is applied to the eyes of
Venus (Il. iii. 397), to arms (Il. xii. 195 _et alibi_), and to the
golden palace of Neptune (Il. xiii. 22). The marble, from which the
words are derived, was white: but that signification would not suit any
of the uses of the words, except the web of Helen. The sense, that will
suit them, is one derived from the idea of light, that of glittering or
sparkling.
Lastly: ἠεροειδὴς (Il. v. 770; Od. xiii. 103) is so evidently an
atmospheric epithet only, that it requires no detailed discussion. It
is worthy of note, as it indicates the idea of atmospheric transparency.
~_Conflict of colours in the same object._~
III. We might have attained to some nearly similar results, by taking
the names of substantives in Homer, and considering the differences in
the epithets of colour by which he describes them.
Thus, for example, iron is violet, grey, and αἴθων or tawny. There is
a certain opposition between the first and second: a very marked one
between the second and third. When considered as names of colour, they
cannot be reconciled, but they may perhaps be made in some degree to
harmonize by introducing the element of light. Iron is dark or tawny if
in the shade: while under light it may appear grey.
Again, the dragon, or serpent, which is δάφοινος in Il. ii. 308, is
also κυάνεος in Il. xi. 26; and is compared to the rainbow, which is
πορφυρέη in Il. xvii. Δάφοινος, being applied to the lion’s hide in
Il. x. 23, is essentially of a dull colour, but the rainbow is as
essentially bright. Here, again, the only mode of harmonizing is by
the supposition that Homer really regulates the use of those epithets
according to light; and thus the same object may be dull and bright in
different positions.
Again, κέραυνος is in composition white (ἀργικέραυνος): but it is also
ψολοεὶς, smutty. In truth it is neither: but its near connection both
with light and with darkness will admit of its being referred to either.
~_Great predominance of white and black._~
IV. I have next to notice the vast predominance in Homer of the two
simple opposites, white and black, which may be called, perhaps, the
elemental forms of colour: white being the compound of the seven
prismatic colours in their natural proportions, and black the absence,
or simple negative, of them all.
The adjective μέλας, or ‘black,’ is used, in its different degrees,
cases, and numbers, about one hundred and seventy times. Besides this,
we have the verb μελαίνω, and several compounds from the adjective. It
also forms a very frequent element in proper names.
The word λευκὸς, or ‘white,’ is used nearly sixty times: its compound
λευκώλενος forty more, but almost all of these as the stock-epithet
of Juno, which should not be taken into the account. We have also
λευκαίνω, λεύκασπις, and some proper names. But this by no means
exhausts Homer’s means of expressing whiteness. For that purpose he
also uses μαρμάρεος, σιγαλόεις, perhaps πόλιος, and an extensive group
of words having ἀργὸς for its centre. In all, whiteness, or something
intended for it, may perhaps be thus expressed one hundred times or
more.
Now assuming for the moment that adjectives of colour, in the prismatic
sense of the word, are found in Homer, still it is remarkable how
rarely they are found, in comparison with whiteness and blackness.
For example: except as a proper name, and as the stock-epithet of
Menelaus, ξανθὸς is, I think, hardly found ten times in Homer.
Ἰόεις, and its cognate words, come but six times: ῥοδόεις is an ἅπαξ
λεγόμενον: μίλτος is only introduced in its compound twice; yet it
is probably the best _red_ in Homer: ἐρυθρὸς and ἐρυθαίνω come but
thirteen times: πορφύρεος and the kindred words are found in all
twenty-three times; but it has, I think, been shown that this word was
wanting, with Homer, in the ingredient of specific colour, and only
implied what was dark, whether brown, crimson, purple, or even black.
~_Omissions to specify colour._~
V. It remains to complete this circle of evidence, by adducing cases
where Homer’s omission to name colour, or to describe by means of it,
is deserving of remark.
1. Homer’s similes are so rich in the use of all sensible imagery,
that we might have expected to find colour a frequent and prominent
ingredient in them. But it is not so. They turn chiefly, I think, upon
the following ideas:
1. Motion.
2. Force.
3. Form.
4. Sound.
5. Symmetry.
6. Number.
7. Light and Darkness.
8. Very rarely, upon Colour.
In the greater part of them colour is not even mentioned. I have seen
the similes of the poems reckoned at two hundred: and I have found it
difficult to note more than three which turn upon colour, even when it
is vaguely conceived.
The first is the blood of Menelaus, compared to a crimson dye, on the
cheek-piece of a horse, Il. iv. 141.
The second, the meditations of Nestor, likened to the darkening of the
sea before a storm, Il. xiv. 16-22.
Thirdly, the cloud in which Minerva is wrapped is compared to the
rainbow, Il. xvii. 547-52.
Of these the second is very indefinite: the idea of the first, as we
have seen, was inaccurately and loosely conceived: and the third is one
of the most striking proofs of the want of a close discrimination of
colours in Homer.
Yet here again we may find life and beauty in the passage, if only
we construe it of a cloud illuminated by the rays falling on it.
Indeed, generally the element of light brings us back to Homer’s usual
definiteness, when his use of colour makes him obscure.
2. Again, in the numerous and very exact epithets by which the Poet has
described the form and appearance of different countries, we scarcely
find any epithet of colour. Out of about sixty of these epithets in the
Greek Catalogue, there are but three that refer to colour, and these
all mention whiteness only (ἀργινόεις, Il. ii. 647, 656, and λευκός,
ibid. 735).
~_In the case of the horse._~
3. It is most singular that, though Homer so loved the horse that he
is never weary of using him with his whole heart for the purposes of
poetry, yet in all his animated and beautiful descriptions of this
animal, colour should be so little prominent. It is said, indeed, that
Homer tells us the horses of Eumelus corresponded in colour (ὅτριχες
Il. ii. 765); but what the colour was we know not; and the question may
also be raised, whether the epithet employed does not more properly
indicate similarity in the fineness of their coat. Perhaps the only
cases, where colour is distinctly assigned to horses, are the following
two:
First, that of the horses of Rhesus. There the colour is the negative
one of whiteness, which seems, with its counterpart blackness, to have
been so much more present to the mind of Homer than any intermediate
colour. These horses were (Il. x. 437) λευκότεροι χιόνος. And
afterwards Nestor in a noble line declares them like, not to anything
having colour, but to the rays of the sun (Il. x. 547). Thus reappears
the old identification in Homer’s mind of light and colour. There is,
however, another reason to which it may be suspected that we owe the
mention of colour in this instance: namely, that the whiteness is
intended to make them visible in the gloom, and thus to assist the
capture by night.
The second case is, that of the horse of Diomed in the chariot-race.
Here Idomeneus mentions the bay or chestnut colour (Il. xxiii. 454)
with the white mark, but then it is the only means of identifying the
master, which is essential to his purpose in the speech. Apart from
these special reasons, Homer speaks indeed twice of the ξανθὰ κάρηνα
of horses; this, however, is of horses in the abstract. Nestor (Il. xi.
680) mentions a set of one hundred and fifty mares all with colour,
that is to say, ξανθαί: a new proof of the lax use of the word, as they
would hardly be all alike.
Among the four horses of Hector (Il. viii. 185), the two of the Atreidæ
(Il. xxiii. 295), and the three of Achilles (xvi. 475) we find only the
name Xanthus which is clearly referable to colour: and this is in truth
the only colour which, besides white, he ever gives to his horses. For
it is more probable that by the name Βάλιος he meant to refer to the
effect of light from rapidity of motion: while Αἴθη in Il. xxiii. 409,
Αἴθων and Λάμπος (Il. viii. 485) may signify brightness or darkness
indeed, but neither of these is colour.
Again, in the magnificent simile of the στάτος ἵππος there is no
colour. The three thousand horses of Erichthonius (Il. x. 221) have
no colour. The horses of Diomed (Il. v. 257) have none. Nor have the
heaven-born horses of Tros, nor those which Anchises bred from them
(Il. v. 265. _et seqq._). None of the teams for the race in Il. xxiii.
have colour. Lastly; Homer abounds in characteristic and set epithets
for horses, such as ὠκὺς, ὠκύπους, ποδώκης, μώνυξ, ἐριαύχην, ἀερσίπους,
ἐΰσκαρθμος, ὑψήχης, καλλίθριξ, ταχὺς, and others; but none of them are
taken from colour.
Yet colour is in horses a thing so prominent that it seems, wherever
they are at all individualized, almost to force itself into the
description. Let us take two examples allied in their beauty, although
separated in birth by twenty-two hundred years. The first is from
Euripides, where the Chorus in _Iphigenia in Aulide_ describes the
Grecian host before embarcation[847].
[847] Eurip. Iph. in Aul. 213-22.
ὁ δὲ διφρηλάτας βοᾶτ’
Εὔμηλος Φερητιάδας,
ᾧ καλλίστους εἰδόμαν
χρυσοδαιδάλτους στομίοισι πώλους
κέντρῳ θεινομένους, τοὺς μὲν μέσ-
σους ζυγίους, λευκοστίκτῳ τριχὶ
βαλιοὺς, τοὺς δ’ ἐξὼ σειραφόρους,
ἀντήρεις καμπαῖσι δρόμων
πυῤῥότριχας, μονόχαλα δ’ ὑπὸ σφυρὰ
ποικιλοδέρμονας.
The second, also eminently beautiful, is from Macaulay, where in the
‘Battle of the Lake Regillus’, after the deadly conflict of Mamilius
and Herminius, he describes what then happened to their steeds.
Fast, fast, with heels wild spurning,
The _dark-grey_ charger fled;
He burst through ranks of fighting men,
He sprang o’er heaps of dead....
But like a graven image
_Black_ Auster kept his place,
And ever wistfully he looked
Into his master’s face.
How characteristically the element of colour enters into these
admirable descriptions.
4. It is not, however, the case of the horse alone, on which an
argument may be founded. Homer abounds with notices of other animals,
both domesticated and wild. We have oxen, dogs, goats, hogs, and sheep.
None of his stock epithets for them are drawn from colour; and we have
seen that by his wine-coloured oxen, and his violet-coloured sheep, he,
in all likelihood, means no more than dark or tawny. His epithets for
wild animals are of the same character when they occur, and similarly
depend on the scale of degrees between light and darkness, not upon
colour. Once he mentions a white goose (Od. xv. 161); but it is borne
on high in the talons of an eagle, and the object evidently is to
create a clear visual image.
5. I would not lay overmuch stress on the fact, that Homer never refers
to colour in connection with the human frame, unless as regards the
hair, which is either ξανθὸς or κυάνεος: expressions which, as we
shall see, are apparent exceptions, and not real ones. The olive hue
of the Mediterranean latitudes makes colour a less prominent element
in human beauty for a Greek climate, than it is for ours. Still its
almost entire exclusion is an element in the case. One instance that
I have noticed, which introduces it, adds to the general mass of
testimony. When Minerva (Od. xvi. 175) restores the beauty of Ulysses,
the expression is ἂψ δὲ μελαγχροιὴς γένετο. Now this certainly does not
mean that his flesh became black again. It can only signify that he
resumed the olive tint, which was associated with personal vigour and
beauty. So that even the μέλας of Homer means dark, and is indefinite:
as might indeed be shown by many other instances.
6. Lastly, it seems to deserve remark, that there is not one single
epithet of Iris taken from colour. She is once, and only once,
χρυσόπτερος (Il. viii. 398); but this is in virtue of her office, and
has no relation to the rainbow; as, indeed, gold with Homer always
belongs to light rather than to colour. All her other epithets, without
exception, are taken from motion only. She is swift (ὠκέα and τάχεια),
swift of foot (πόδας ὠκέα), swift as the wind (ποδήνεμος), storm-footed
(ἀελλόπους[848]), but from colour she derives no part whatever of her
Homeric costume. Now though the chain of traditions which identified
Iris with the rainbow was broken[849], yet the traces of it were not
wholly lost. For Homer treated the rainbow, physically, as a prophet
of storm (Il. xvii. 548): and again, we find that she was still
tempest-footed. This epithet can only be derived from her original
relation to the rainbow. It is therefore highly instructive, that none
of her traits of colour should have been preserved.
[848] Il. xviii. 409. xxiv. 159.
[849] See Olympus, sect. ii. p. 157.
Lastly, let us take the case of the sky, or the heavens. Here Homer
had before him the most perfect example of blue. Yet he never once so
describes the sky. His οὐρανὸς is starry (Il. i. 317), or broad (Il.
iii. 364), or great (Il. i. 497), or iron (Od. xv. 328), or copper (Od.
iii. 2. Il. xvii. 425); but it is never blue. This is an important
piece of negative testimony.
We have now before us a pretty large, though I by no means venture to
suppose it a complete, collection of the facts of the case.
~_Causes of this peculiar treatment._~