Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 3 of 3

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 embarcation847.

ὁ δὲ διφρηλάτας βοᾶτ’Εὔμηλος Φερητιάδας,ᾧ καλλίστους εἰδόμανχρυσοδαιδάλτους στομίοισι πώλουςκέντρῳ θεινομένους, τοὺς μὲν μέσ-σους ζυγίους, λευκοστίκτῳ τριχὶβαλιοὺς, τοὺς δ’ ἐξὼ σειραφόρους,ἀντήρεις καμπαῖσι δρόμωνπυῤῥότριχας, μονόχαλα δ’ ὑπὸ σφυρὰποικιλοδέρμονας.

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 imageBlack Auster kept his place,And ever wistfully he lookedInto 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 (ἀελλόπους848), 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 broken849, 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.

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.

I submit that they warrant the two following propositions:

1. That Homer’s perceptions of the prismatic colours, or colours of the rainbow, which depend on the decomposition of light by refraction, and a fortiori of their compounds, were, as a general rule, vague and indeterminate.

2. That we must therefore seek another basis for his system of colour.

But a few words may be permitted on the cause which has led to his treatment of the subject in a manner so different from that of the moderns.

Are we justified in referring it to his reputed blindness?

Are we to suppose a defect in his organization, or in that of his countrymen?

Or are we to reject altogether the idea of defect, and to treat his use of colour as one conceived in the spirit which, with even the most perfect knowledge, would properly belong to his art?

The mere tradition of Homer’s blindness is hardly relevant. The presumption of it drawn from the poems, because they make Demodocus blind, is inappreciably minute. The testimony of the Hymn to Apollo is ancient850; but, as his blindness (if he really was blind) allowed of the most vivid conceptions of light, it will not account for defectiveness in his conceptions of colour. The vigorous apprehension and accurate description of sensible objects in the poems demonstrate, that we cannot seek in this hypothesis for an explanation of what may be either singular, crude, or irregular.

Neither can we resort to the supposition of anything, that is to be properly called a defect in his organization; when we bear in mind his intense feeling for form, and when we observe his effective and powerful handling of the ideas of light and dark.

License of Poetry as to colour.

Our answer to the third question must also, I think, be in the negative. It is true, indeed, that much of merely literal discrepancy as to colour might be understood to appertain to the license of poetry. There is high poetical effect in what may be called straining epithets of colour. But it seems essential to that effect,

(1.) That the straining should be the exception, and not the rule.

(2.) That there should be a fixed standard of the colour itself, so that the departures from it may be measured. Otherwise the result is not license, but confusion. Shakespeare with high effect says851,

Here lay Duncan,

His silver skin laced with his golden blood.

Here the idea is not that silver is of the same colour as skin, nor gold as blood; but that the relation of colour between silver and gold may be compared with that between skin and blood: the skin throws the blood into relief, as a ground of silver would throw out a projection of gold. In license of this kind we can always trace both a rule and an aim. The rule is relaxed only for the particular occasion. The effect produced is that of tenderness, dignity, and purity. Had Shakespeare been describing the horrible carnage of a battlefield, he probably would have spoken of black or foul gore instead of using a brightening figure.

Now this purpose is not traceable in Homer’s use of certain words, if we are required to treat them as adjectives of colour. There is no Poet, whose rationale is commonly more accessible; but these cases, upon such a principle, do not admit of a rationale at all.

Take for instance his use of the rainbow. It is (1) πορφυρέη, and (2) like a δράκων, which is κυάνεος. Of these, the first may be construed dark with a hue of crimson; the second, dark with a hue of deep blue or indigo. Surely we have here, viewing it as a whole, a most inadequate treatment of the colours of the rainbow. Shakespeare indeed says852,

His crest, that prouder than blue Iris bends;

and again, in the Tempest, Ceres addresses Iris thus853;

And with each end of thy blue bow dost crown

My bosky acres…

But (1) blue differs from πορφύρεος, which is essentially dark, and is not blue. (2) Blue, taken largely, represents three of the seven prismatic colours: i. e. indigo and purple along with itself. (3) In the last quoted passage, Iris is also called ‘many-coloured messenger,’ and with ‘saffron wings.’ How different an effect do these words give, as they form a whole, from that of the simile in Il. xvii. In what manner then are we to understand Homer? I answer, in the way of metaphor; and with reference to light and dark, not to prismatic colour. The δράκοντες on the buckler and belt are dark and terrible: so is the storm of which Iris is the type, and it is in viewing the rainbow as a type of what is awful, that we are to find the reason of Homer’s simply treating it as dark, and not as a series and system of colours. Perhaps we ought not to overlook the possibility that Homer may also mean to compare the shifting hues of the serpent with the varied appearance of the rainbow.

Again, let us take his use of μελαγχροίης. Now the question is, did Homer mean by this simply to express darkness, that is to say was dark his idea of μέλας, or did he, with the specific idea of black in his mind, use the term which denoted it poetically for the olive complexion of Ulysses? Surely the former: for the latter use of it would have been bad. It would have been straining the figure in the wrong direction. For blackness would be a fitting trope only where the object was to describe something awful or repulsive.

But beauty of form in Homer always leans to light hues and not to dark ones, whence the Greeks are ξανθοὶ, and the Trojan Hector, though beautiful, is κυάνεος only. Therefore it was not Homer’s object to give an enhanced idea of darkness in the tints of Ulysses. And yet, if μέλας for him meant specifically black, then μελαγχροίης was the height of exaggeration in the wrong sense. But if by μέλας he only understood dark, that was a fair description of the olive tint, as compared with the withered and shrivelled skin of old age.

We have other proofs from the poems that Homer conceived of μέλας as dark, and not specifically as black. The former idea accords best with his calling earth μέλας, when it is fresh behind the plough (Il. xviii. 548): and his calling blood μέλας, not stagnant gore, but blood fresh as it comes spurting from the wound (Il. i. 303), and again, the fresh blood of Venus herself: μελαίνετο δὲ χρόα καλόν (Il. v. 354). It would be bad poetry to call the blood of Venus black, for the same reasons which make it good poetry in Shakespeare to call the blood of Duncan golden. So the μέλας πόντος of Il. xxiv. 79 is evidently no more than dark; though in vii. 64 we may properly say the sea blackens.

αἶψά τοι αἷμα κελαινὸν ἐρωήσει περὶ δουρί·

So again with wine-coloured oxen, smutty thunder-bolts, violet-coloured sheep, and many more, it is surely conclusive against taking them for descriptions of prismatic colours or their compounds, that they would be bad descriptions in their several kinds.

Homer’s means of training in colour.

We must then seek for the basis of Homer’s system with respect to colour in something outside our own. And it may prepare us the more readily to acknowledge such a basis elsewhere, if we bear in mind, that many of the great elements and sources of colour for us presented themselves differently to him. The olive hue of the skin kept down the play of white and red. The hair tended much more uniformly, than with us, to darkness. The sense of colour was less exercised by the culture of flowers. The sun sooner changed the spring-greens of the earth into brown. Glass, one of our instruments of instruction, did not exist. The rainbow would much more rarely meet the view. The art of painting was wholly, and that of dyeing was almost, unknown; and we may estimate the importance of this element of the case by recollecting how much, with the advance of chemistry, the taste of this country in colour has improved within the last twenty years. The artificial colours, with which the human eye was conversant, were chiefly the ill-defined, and anything but full-bodied, tints of metals. The materials, therefore, for a system of colour did not offer themselves to Homer’s vision as they do to ours. Particular colours were indeed exhibited in rare beauty, as the blue of the sea and of the sky. Yet these colours were, so to speak, isolated fragments; and, not entering into a general scheme, they were apparently not conceived with the precision necessary to master them. It seems easy to comprehend that the eye may require a familiarity with an ordered system of colours, as the condition of its being able closely to appreciate any one among them.

I conclude, then, that the organ of colour and its impressions were but partially developed among the Greeks of the heroic age.

In lieu of this, Homer seems to have had, firstly some crude conceptions of colour derived from the elements; secondly and principally, a system in lieu of colour, founded upon light and upon darkness, its opposite or negative. We have seen that the μέλας of Homer, which is applied to fine olive tints in the skin, and which joins hands with κυάνεος and πορφύρεος, means dark, the absence of light. On the other hand, the basis of whiteness is clearly indicated to us in the etymology of λευκὸς, which is the same as that of λεύσσω to see, and of λύκη light in λυκαβὰς the year, the walk or course of light; as well as in the cognate words, which appear to have their root in the Sanscrit loch, from whence lochan, an eye854.

His system one of light and dark.

As a general proposition, then, I should say that the Homeric colours are really the modes and forms of light855, and of its opposite or rather negative, darkness: partially affected perhaps by ideas drawn from the metals, like the ruddiness of copper, or the sombre and dead blue of κύανος, whatever the substance may have been; and here and there with an inceptive effort, as it were, to get hold of other ideas of colour.

Under the application of this principle, I believe that all, or nearly all, the Homeric words will fall into their places: and that we shall find that the Poet used them, from his own standing-ground, with great vigour and effect. We can now see why λευκὸς and μέλας with their kindred words have such an immense predominance: though white and black are the limiting ratios of colour, rather than colour itself.

Of the transparent and opaque, or chiaroscuro, we cannot expect to hear from Homer: yet, as has been observed, a rudiment of it may be contained in the highly poetical ἠεροειδὲς of the cave or sea; and again in the δνοφερὴ νὺξ (Od. xiii. 269), since νέφος is the basis of the epithet.

When we speak of colour proper, we speak of an effect which is produced by the decomposition of light, and which, so long as the eye can discharge its function, is complete, whatever the quantity, or the incidence, of light upon the object said to have colour may happen to be.

When we speak of light, shade, and darkness, we refer to the quantity of light, not decomposed, which falls upon that object, and to the mode of its incidence.

Of light, shadow, and darkness thus regarded, Homer had lively and most poetical conceptions. This description of objects by light and its absence tax his materials to the uttermost. His iron-grey, his ruddy, his starry heaven, are so many modes of light. His wine-coloured oxen and sea, his violet sheep, his things tawny, purple, sooty, and the rest, give us in fact a rich vocabulary of words for describing what is dark so far as it has colour, but what also varies between dull and bright, according to the quantity of light playing upon it. Here (for example) is the link between his αἴθοψ κάπνος and his αἴθοψ οἶνος.

As these words all follow in the train, so to speak, of μέλας, even so λευκὸς is attended by its own family, all falling under the meaning of the English adjective light. On the one hand χλωρὸς and πόλιος; on the other μαρμάρεος, ἀργὸς, and σιγαλόεις, all mean light; but the first two are dull, and represent the twilight of colour, or debateable ground between it and its negative, while the last three are bright and glistering.

Nothing can be more poetical than Homer’s ideas of dark and light. It was a redundancy of life in these ideas, that made him associate light with motion; as in those fine lines (Il. ii. 437),

ὣς τῶν ἐρχομένων ἀπὸ χαλκοῦ θεσπεσίοιοαἴγλη παμφανόωσα δι’ αἰθέρος οὐρανὸν ἷκεν.

And, again, in the Arming of Achilles (Il. xix. 362),

αἴγλη δ’ οὐρανὸν ἷκε, γέλασσε δὲ πᾶσα περὶ χθών.

So, on the other hand, the idea of darkness went to animate metaphysical conceptions, as in black fate, black death, black clouds of death, black pains (Il. ii. 859, 834. xvi. 350. iv. 117).

Naturalists tell us, that there exist kinds of creatures respecting which it is known, that their organs are sensitive to light and darkness, but with no perception whatever either of colour or of form856. So far as respects form, Homer perceived keenly such forms as were beautiful: but of mere geometrical form he may have had very indistinct ideas, if we are to judge from his epithets for the form of a shield. The parallel is nearer in the case of colour; for even his perceptions were as yet undigested; as if they were novel, not aided by tradition, acquired very much by himself, and fixed as yet neither by custom nor nomenclature.

From the remains which have reached us of the colours of the ancients, it has been found practicable to treat of them in precise detail857. But, in examining the question from the works of Homer, we must bear in mind, first, their very early date, and, secondly, the likelihood that heroic Greece may probably have been far behind some countries of the east in the use and in the idea of colour, which has always had a privileged home there.

Colour in the later Greek language.

The tendency, however, to a mixture of the two questions of light and colour appears to be traceable more or less in the popular language, and likewise in the philosophy, of the later Greeks.

In the classical period, the hues of the eye were divided, as μέλας the darkest, χάροπος the intermediate, and γλαυκὸς the lightest.

The word πράσινος, leek-green, appears to be quite adequate to the expression of the colour. It is used by Aristotle; but I do not know that it is found in the poets or writers of the best age. For the classical Greek the idea of greenness is expressed by χλωρὸς, as far as it is expressed at all. Now this word seems inadequate on two grounds. First, its predominant idea is that of ‘fresh’ or ‘recent;’ which is but accidentally, and not invariably, the property of those objects in nature that are green.

When we find the word χλωρὸς applied alike to objects of a green colour, and to others that have no colour, (or else not in respect of their colour,) but yet which are fresh or newly sprung, we are led to conclude that it was for freshness, and not for greenness, that the word was generally used. This idea is confirmed by two circumstances. First, that when χλωρὸς does signify colour, as in the case of paleness, (where it cannot mean what is fresh,) it signifies the most indefinite and feeble colour, little more indeed than a negative.

The meaning of χλωρὸν δεός is probably ashy-pale fear. In the green of the olive we see the point of connection between this use of the term on the one hand, and natural verdure on the other. So that the image of the colour green, to the Greeks, was neither lively and bright on the one hand, nor was it strong and deep on the other.

The second circumstance is this: that the word χλωρὸς is applied by the later Greeks to objects that have a colour, but a colour which is not green: and this by authors who had the full use of sight. Thus, in Euripides, (Hecuba 124,) we have αἵματι χλωρῷ for blood freshly shed. It seems plain that, when the epithet could be thus used, colour could only be very carelessly and faintly conceived in the minds either of those who used the expression, or of those to whom it was addressed.