Wine-dark sea
en.wikipedia.org
Wine-dark sea
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Re: Wine-dark sea
#2I can recommend the book "Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages" to anyone interested in this sort of stuff.
Re: Wine-dark sea
#3Every time this wanders across the front page of HN, I wonder:
What are the chances this is more a description of the murkiness or opacity of a dark sea (compared to water near the shore) rather than the literal color of the water?
Re: Wine-dark sea
#4I know researchers have found how the ancient Greeks used to paint their sculptures, and that they used blue, green, and red as separate colors (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/true-colors-1788...).
I always considered that phrase in Homer as a poetic flourish, or maybe just something that was a figure of speech in his time period.
Re: Wine-dark sea
#5Every time this wanders across the front page of HN, I wonder: What are the chances this is more a description of the murkiness or opacity of a dark sea (compared to water near the shore) rather than the literal color of the water?
Also maybe they literally had blue wine?
Re: Wine-dark sea
#6Re: Wine-dark sea
#7I know researchers have found how the ancient Greeks used to paint their sculptures, and that they used blue, green, and red as separate colors ( https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/true-colors-1788... ). I always considered that phrase in Homer as a poetic flourish, or maybe just something that was a figure of speech in his time period.
Yes, the ancient Greeks knew about the color blue, as do most old world primates. Here is an linguistic explanation of color language around the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMqZR3pqMjg
The sculpture reconstructions you've linked are rather imaginative -- German grad students with UV lights, not chemical reconstructions -- and are probably only vaguely like the original colors. Where original colors have actually survived, in frescoes, etc., the ancients display a reasonable eye for beauty in color.
Re: Wine-dark sea
#8I know researchers have found how the ancient Greeks used to paint their sculptures, and that they used blue, green, and red as separate colors ( https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/true-colors-1788... ). I always considered that phrase in Homer as a poetic flourish, or maybe just something that was a figure of speech in his time period.
Yes, the ancient Greeks knew about the color blue, as do most old world primates. Here is an linguistic explanation of color language around the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMqZR3pqMjg The sculpture reconstructions you've linked are rather imaginative -- German grad students with UV lights, not chemical reconstructions -- and are probably only vaguely like the original colors. Where original colors have ac…
Yea, I agree the coloring they present in what I linked is quite... ugly. But what I was trying to get at is that it does seem that, at that point, the Greeks could distinguish between the color of wine and the color blue. And that therefore Homer's "wine-dark" is in reference to something other than color.
(I had seen that video before, it's very enlightening.)
Re: Wine-dark sea
#9Every time this wanders across the front page of HN, I wonder: What are the chances this is more a description of the murkiness or opacity of a dark sea (compared to water near the shore) rather than the literal color of the water?
Also maybe they literally had blue wine?
Red wine will turn blue when the pH gets too alkaline. You can also make actual blue wine using the grapes to make a dye, see Gïk's blue wine.
Re: Wine-dark sea
#10I know researchers have found how the ancient Greeks used to paint their sculptures, and that they used blue, green, and red as separate colors ( https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/true-colors-1788... ). I always considered that phrase in Homer as a poetic flourish, or maybe just something that was a figure of speech in his time period.
> I always considered that phrase in Homer as a poetic flourish, or maybe just something that was a figure of speech in his time period.
I'd say it's a worthy phrase—to put it mildly—whether or not you know what blue is. I wouldn't count it as evidence that they were unfamiliar with the concept of blue.