REMAINS OF FRONTO
and the lion all fulvus;[1] and so Quintus in his Annals used it of bronze. Flavus, on the other hand, seems to be a combination of green and red and white; thus tresses are called flaventes,[2] and, what I find surprising to some, Vergil speaks of the leaves of olives as flavae: and so, long before, Pacuvius[3] talked of water[4] and dust being flavus; and as his lines are most delightful, I willingly recall them:
Reach me thy foot, that these same hands that bathed Ulysses oft,
May with the yellow waters cleanse the yellow dust,
And with the hand's soft stroking soothe thy weariness.
Rubidus, however, is a darker red with a large proportion of black. Luteus, on the other hand, is a more transparent red, from which its name also seems to be derived.[5] So you see, my Favorinus, that more shades of red have not distinctive names among the Greeks than among us. Nor have they more terms than we have for expressing the colour green either. Vergil, having occasion to describe a horse as green, could have used the word caeruleus rather than glaucus, but preferred to use a better known Greek word than an unusual Latin one.[6] Our ancient Latin writers called that caesia, which in Greek is πλαυκῶπις, as Nigidius[7] says, from the colour of the sky, as if caelia."
5. When Fronto had said this, Favorinus, complimenting him warmly on his abundant knowledge of
- ↑ See Verg. Aen. xi. 751; iv. 261; vii. 6S8; vii. 279; xii. 741; iv. 159 (cp. Lucr. v. 902); but he also says flavum aurum (i. 592). Servius on the passage vii. 688 mentions Fronto as speaking of galerum.
- ↑ Verg. Aen. iv. 590; cp. Hor. Od. I. v. 4.
- ↑ From the Niptra
- ↑ Vergil calls the Tiber flavus (Aen. vii. 31) and Horace.
- ↑ The word seems to be taken from a weed lutum, which was rather yellow than red. It is used of the dawn by Verg. Aen. vii. 26.
- ↑ i.e. caeruleus in the sense of green, for which see Propertius, iv. ii. 43; Ovid, Met. xi. 158.
- ↑ A Pythagorean philosopher and grammarian of Cicero's time.
