ANTONIUS

THYLESIUS OF COSENZA

A short treatise on colors.

I shall say something about colors in this short treatise, not indeed about where they are made, or what their nature is; for these things are not taught to painters or philosophers, but only to philologists who diligently investigate the elegance of the Latin language. I shall write everything briefly and accurately: and I shall place the names of the things themselves beside each one, so that the colors may be understood immediately.

BLUE (COERULEUS) CAP. I.

I shall begin first with Blue: if nature herself did not greatly delight in it, she would certainly never have gladdened the entire universe—that domicile of the gods, constantly holding all things in a continuous embrace—with so joyful an aspect: and then [I shall treat] the rest in sequence. Blue is therefore called coeruleus as if coeluleus (sky-like), as appears from the word itself; it is properly the color of the sky, but of a serene one: a fact which Ennius, having regard to, calls "the blue temples of the sky." And from this, the sea is called coeruleum by all, for it reflects that same brightness which it receives from the sky above. Wherefore, some of the ancients—just as they adorned another work of Homer with a blood-red color on account of the slaughters of which the poet speaks there—so they covered the Odyssey, where he writes of the maritime wanderings of Ulysses, with blue parchment. But since a certain species of blue is almost black, such as that which is called Indicum (indigo), and in which Greek women once dressed

Blue sea.

Another species of blue color.