Color-Terms in Social and Cultural Context in Ancient Rome by Rachael B. Goldman (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Color-Terms in Social and Cultural Context in Ancient Romeby Rachael B. Goldman Maria Michela Sassi Rachael B. Goldman. Color-Terms in Social and Cultural Context in Ancient Rome. Gorgias Studies in Classical and Late Antiquity, 3. Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2013. Pp. ix, 193. $95.00. ISBN 978–1-61143–914–4. This book, a development of a portion of the author’s Ph.D. dissertation in History (“ Tinturae Romanorum:Social and Cultural Constructions of Color-Terms in Roman Literature,” CUNY 2011), is the latest addition to the ever-flourishing scholarship on colors in the ancient world, whose most recent notable fruits [End Page 301]are M. Bradley, Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome(Cambridge, 2009) and A. Grand-Clément, La fabrique des couleurs. Histoire du paysage sensible des Grecs anciens (VIII e—début du V esiècle avant notre ère)(Paris 2011). How Goldman’s agenda differs from that of her predecessor in the Roman field does not emerge clearly from her statement in the introduction (a brief treatment of the thorny issue of Greek and Roman color taxonomies) that she intends to examine “the color-terms at play in certain texts” so as “to grasp more readily the interplay among roles of gender, ethnicity, religion, economic and class differences, political affairs, and passions of the day” (7). However, apart from the inevitable overlap of the main topic, it becomes clear throughout the book that Goldman aims at a sort of antiquarian survey of her sources, selected from the whole of Latin literature, whereas Bradley focused on the intellectual debate about the moral and social values assigned to the various colores, and was rather sensible to the awarenessof the power of coloras a tool of information and evaluation in early Imperial Rome. Throughout seven chapters the discussion covers the famous color debate between Favorinus and Fronto on Greek and Latin linguistic categories in Gellius’ Noctes Atticae(Fronto’s treatment is oddly judged “almost comical,” 13); the pigments used for dyes, and the relevance of the production costs to the evaluation of the dyed objects; the colors of garments as signs of class and gender distinction; the effectiveness of colors for distinguishing the chariot teams in the circus; the notations of the colors of the skin, the eyes, and the hair in a few physiognomic descriptions; the analysis of such terms as versicolor, decolor, discolor, and other similar adjectives ending in color. The last is admittedly the most original part of the book, having been “rarely examined in the scholarship,” as the author observes in the final pages (163), the general conclusion being that “what was seen in Roman material culture is reflected in the literature of the day” (161). A few nice touches are scattered here and there. I was glad to learn, for example, that coccinus—just like the more famous purpureus—was an appreciated because expensive hue (32), and I was amused to read that the gilded ( subauratus) ring exhibited by that notorious freedman Trimalchio allowed him to bypass a senatusconsultumwhich permitted only freeborn men to wear golden rings (74). Unfortunately, the overall treatment is blurred. I registered an increasing number of typographical errors in the English idiom, the Latin, and the Greek (breathings and accents are often wrong), as well as several misquotations both of the ancient sources and the bibliography (I note here only 118, a messy translation of Cassius Dio, and 102 note 13, where Aristot. Hist. Anim.492a4 appears instead of Gen. Anim.779b15). Goldman is especially uncomfortable when it comes to Greek culture; for example, she claims that “the only work of literature attributed to Favorinus is the Corinthian Oration” (23); she extrapolates from the epithet of Athena glaukôpisthat “gray eyes are an ancient trope for descriptions of gods and goddesses” (102); she talks of “physiognomic principles outlined by the Aristotelean schools” (my emphasis: 163). Inconsistencies are ubiquitous: see, for instance, subflavus, translated as “golden” and “diminished yellow” just a few lines later, only the latter being correct, as the author knows (101 note 6); or the reading of Ovid Fast. 3.493, where preference for a “fair-skinned...