History Unplugged Podcast
Scott RankNo, the Ancient Greeks Weren’t Color Blind. They Justed Had Unique Ways to Describe the World
February 8, 2022 ● 47 minShare this episode
Were ancients color-blind? They weren’t but this idea has been passed around for centuries, usually by classicists confused by the Greeks’ odd choice of descriptive language. Homer, author of The Iliad and The Odyssey, the first ‘great’ poet of western civilization described the sea as oînops, or ‘wine-dark’.
Today’s guest is David Wharton, editor and contributor to “A Cultural History of Color in Antiquity,” is here to disabuse those ideas of the ancient world. Some prominent, recent research on Latin color language asserts that the ancient Romans mostly lacked abstract color concepts, instead conceiving of “color” as intimately connected with the material substances that Latin color terms typically referred to. Not only that the Romans were fully capable of forming and expressing abstract color concepts, but also that they expressed relationships among these concepts using structured metaphors of location and motion in an abstract color space.
We also discuss how would a resident from the ancient world would view color differently from a modern person, techniques for color creation in the past, and how color was utilized iin such things as conspicuous consumption, sartorial purposes, and class distinction.
Today’s guest is David Wharton, editor and contributor to “A Cultural History of Color in Antiquity,” is here to disabuse those ideas of the ancient world. Some prominent, recent research on Latin color language asserts that the ancient Romans mostly lacked abstract color concepts, instead conceiving of “color” as intimately connected with the material substances that Latin color terms typically referred to. Not only that the Romans were fully capable of forming and expressing abstract color concepts, but also that they expressed relationships among these concepts using structured metaphors of location and motion in an abstract color space.
We also discuss how would a resident from the ancient world would view color differently from a modern person, techniques for color creation in the past, and how color was utilized iin such things as conspicuous consumption, sartorial purposes, and class distinction.
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Today's Devotional
A Prayer to Accept God's Calling - Your Daily Prayer - October 20
God doesn’t call us because we have it all figured out or because we are perfect in our faith. And so, accepting our calling isn’t dependent upon some criteria of perfection we must meet. Ultimately, accepting our call isn’t an act of spiritual power; it’s one of trust.
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