A Little Book on Colors

for it is purple, the color into which they say he was changed as a youth. Concerning the Hyacinth transformed into the little flower of letters, we have written this:

No need to adorn the tomb with an inscription or a flower.
The flower is itself an inscription, and the boy is the epitaph.

Cælum ferrugineum

In the same way, the sky is called Ferrugineum, that is, cloudy and sad, and by the same Virgil the Sun covered his shining head with ferrugine at the death of Caesar, as if he put on a color suited to a mourner so that the Sun himself might seem to lament the slaughter of so great a man. Nor for any other reason did he call Charon’s little boat ferruginea, than because it alone, in place of a bier (Sandapila), carries all the dead across, like an untiring undertaker.

RUFUS (REDDISH) CHAP. VII.

That Rufus is not the same as Rubrum (red) can be understood from this: that it is correctly said "red blood" (sanguis ruber), but Rufus is not correctly said. Again, the ancients did not call the beard and hair of Aenobarbus Rubrum, but only Rufum, or Rutilum (golden-red), which is the same. Moreover, the Roman priests sacrificed dogs—never called Rubras, but those which they called now Rufas, now Rutilas—to appease the star of the Dog-star, an enemy to the crops. From which it is manifest that Rufum and Rutilum are the same, which some also teach from the ancients. Therefore, from the sufficiently known color of the dog, and from the beard and hair of many, it appears what sort of color Rufus is. Rustics once called this Robum and Giluum (yellowish) in cattle, and even Heluum (light yellow): just as there is a certain kind of wine between Rufum and Album, known to everyone; which, because it refers to the color of the cherry