colōrēs: colours
There is a wide range of vocabulary in Latin to describe colour, the Roman interpretation of which could be as diverse as our own. Posted are some 1st / 2nd declension adjectives to describe colour, but there are many more.
āter; niger: both mean ‘black’, but āter is closer to the English ‘matt black’, a flat colour without shine, whereas niger is shining black. Compare matt black and gloss black paints and you will see the difference between the two; āter also suggests dark in the sense of ‘gloomy’.
caeruleus: often simply (and superficially) translated as blue, referred to the colour of the sky or the blue-green tones of the sea
purpureus: The reddish-purple dye known as Tyrian purple (purpura), possibly first used by the Phoenicians as early as 1570BCE was made from the secretions of thousands of sea-snails and highly valued by the Romans who used it to colour ceremonial robes.
ruber; rūfus: used by the Romans to make the same distinction as we do between a red colour which you, for example, would see on walls (ruber), and the red colour of a person’s hair (rūfus); rūfus can also mean ‘ruddy’ to describe someone’s complexion.
albus: is the general word for ‘white’ – not the ‘whiter than white’ of our washing powder advertisements!
candidus: has the specific meaning of ‘shining / brilliant white’; at election times, those hoping to gain a seat in the Senate or become top man in their town would wander around the streets dressed in shining white togas, maybe to send a message to the electorate that they were squeaky clean although, judging by the behaviour of some of them, that was far from the truth. But they would certainly stand out from the crowd. These were the men ‘dressed in shining white’ – candidātī – from which the English word ‘candidate’ is derived. Maybe some of our present-day candidates aren’t quite as squeaky clean either!
Togas would have been taken to a ‘fullery’, a workshop for cleaning clothes. There the laundry workers (fullōnēs) filled the tubs with a mixture of water and alkaline chemicals – sometimes including ammonia derived from urine – and trampled, scrubbed and wrung out the cloth.
prasinus: the colour is specifically described as ‘leek green’, and was also used as a noun to refer to a particular group of charioteers (see note below).
The second image shows the epitaph for Fuscus; we will focus on the first two lines of the inscription:
FVSCVS CVRSOR
PRASINI VIX[IT] ANN[OS] XXIV
Fuscus, charioteer
of the Green (racing stable), lived 24 years
His name Fuscus may suggest that he was born in Africa since the word not only means ‘brown’ but also ‘dark-skinned’ or ‘dusky’; he would have been a slave charioteer.
In chariot racing the four factions in Rome were named for the colours worn by their drivers: Red, White, Green, and Blue, each faction entering up to three chariots per race; Fuscus belonged to the green faction.
The third image is reproduced from wiktionary and it shows that there is a far wider range of colour adjectives than have been listed here. Some of the 'colour matches' in that list do not always convey precisely the meanings, but if you wish to explore them more, wiktionary will provide detailed definitions.
viridis
This word is also an adjective meaning ‘green’ and is the most general word used for every shade of the colour, but viridis is not a 1st / 2nd declension adjective: it belongs to another group and is declined differently. However, we will use it here in two examples posted below so that, when we start to look at physical descriptions, those who have green eyes do not feel left out! The word will reappear when its declension pattern is covered in a later post. The only form you will need in the next post is viridēs.
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