Page:Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto volume 2 Haines 1920.djvu/279

 learned men being present, a discussion took place about colours and their designations, since there were many varieties of colours, but their denominations few and ambiguous, Favorinus remarked that "more varieties of colour are distinguished by the sense of sight than differentiated by words and terms of speech. For, to omit their other nice blendings, the simple colours red and green have indeed separate names but include many different varieties and the dearth of terms for these I find to be greater in Latin than in Greek. For instance, the colour rufus is indeed called so from rubor (redness), but while there is one redness of fire, another of blood, another of the shell-fish dye, another of saffron, (another of gold), yet our Latin speech does not discriminate between these separate varieties of red by separate and distinctive terms, but designates them all by the single term redness, though at the same time it borrows names for the colours from the objects themselves, and calls a thing fiery-red and flame-red and blood-red and purple-red and saffron-red and gold-red, for the colours russus and ruber do not differ at all from the colour called rufus, nor do they express its peculiar shades; but (chestnut) and   (wine-red) and  (flame-red) and  (purple-red) seem to distinguish certain differences in the colour red, either darkening it or making it lighter or giving it an intermediate shade." 263