Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome

2023/01/11 by Mark Philip Bradley, Bradley, Mark · 123 citations
Arts and Humanities · #Archaeology #Art #Byzantine Studies and History #Epistemology #History #Linguistics #Literature #Meaning (existential) #Natural (archaeology) #Optics #Philosophy #Rainbow #Rhetoric

paper · open access · doi:10.48352/uobxjah.00004229

published in ePapers Repository (University of Birmingham) (University of Birmingham)

openalex publication_date 2023/01/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15

Abstract

Introduction 1. The rainbow 2. Lucretius and the philosophy of color 3. Pliny the Elder and the unnatural history of color 4. Color and rhetoric 5. The natural body 6. The unnatural body 7. Purple Conclusion: colours triumphant Envoi: Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 2.26.

Cited by

• Britons in blue: A contextual analysis of corporeal painting in Great Britain, from the Iron Age to the early Middle Ages
• OBESITY, CORPULENCE AND EMACIATION IN ROMAN ART

Related

• Les couleurs dans l'Antiquité
• The play of colours of prisms
• Colour Matters
• The goddess’ new clothes: the carving and polychromy of the Parthenon Sculptures
• Four colours and the visual separation of adjacent areas: lessons from mapping and ancient paintings