A Little Book on Colors

Impluuiatus. Suasus.

Some have called garments colored in this way Colorias. Augustus used this word in his will, where these words were read: "My purple and Colorias shaggy cloaks." And the same, as I feel, are called the pulli (foals) of horses and other beasts, as if pure, not yet violated by any lust or labor. Very similar to this pullus is the color Impluuiatus, so called as if rained upon by a smoky drip: and Suasus, which is also called Insuasus, refers to mud. Moreover, Suasus is also made from a smoky drip upon a white garment. Wherefore, without doubt, it is no different from Impluuiatus: since some have handed down that every color which is made by dyeing is called suasus, because it is in a way persuaded to change from white into any other color.

FERRUGINEVS (RUST-COLORED) CHAP. VI.

Ferruginei. Hyacinthi.

Iron, rusty from long neglect, easily shows the color named after itself, Ferrugine, for it acts—that is, refers to—the color of iron. Because the dyers also call the threads, with which the mosquito net (Conopaeum) and many other linen garments are often surrounded, Ferruginem. The tunic of the pine nut, with a certain dusty fuzz, is also ferruginea. This was also the color of mourners. And so it is sometimes taken for something funereal, and for this reason, the Hyacinths were called Ferruginei by Virgil, as if mournful, because Apollo long mourned the boy who, as is in the fables, was killed by accident, and he inscribed upon his leaves as if an epitaph, as a perpetual monument of his grief, not because the color of the flower is truly ferrugineus: