BOOK.

their dead, whose souls they believed had migrated to the sky, it is therefore sometimes taken to signify mourning, as in Virgil: "Charon’s blue skiff," and "the blue rain and sun."
The cucumber is referred to as a pride of the world.

The blue cucumber, for that too is read, signifies the melon, which is the most beautiful among cucumbers (for there are many kinds of them). Nor does it seem to be a participant of blue only, but it also shows the steps of the world itself, turned inward, attenuated, as we once composed about it:

Who would deny it was sent from the sky? It recalls the form, and the color,
And the steps of the sky, and of nectar.
For it is of the sweetest flavor. Without any doubt, what we call coeruleum, the Greeks call cyaneum, in whose commentaries I also find lazurion. Attributed to this genus is the color once called Venetus (Venetian), now commonly called Blauus (blue), a color made very famous by the faction of the Circus. Now there were colors in the Circus, besides this Venetus: Rose, White, and Green: to which Gold, Purple, and Yellow were added later. We shall speak of them in their place.

GREY (CAESIUS) CAP. II.

If Caesius were derived—as most learned men have handed down in their monuments—as if Coelius from Coelum (sky), the diphthong in Coelum and Caesium would be the same. But it is certain that in these words it is different, and besides, it would not differ at all from Coeruleum, since that, as we have shown, is derived from Coelum. But it differs without a doubt, even on the authority of M. Tullius himself, whose words in the first book of De Natura Deorum are these: "The