Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 70.djvu/423

Rh from his head downwards. . . and from his head caused deep curling locks to flow like the hyacinth flower.' This comparison, which is made twice, is absolutely incomprehensible to us, if it has reference to color. It is also noteworthy that the epithet which is variously translated 'golden,' 'fair,' 'blond' is so applied to most of the Greek heroes and to horses. Evidently the author of the Homeric poems believed that the Greek nobles did not have the usual dark complexion of the southern races. Be that as it may, we can not resist the conviction that in primitive times the various shades of color that made the same general impression on the sight were named alike. There was hardly any discrimination of the sensations. Homer's usual method of designation of colors is by comparison; hence such words as 'steel-blue,' 'saffron-colored,' 'blood-red,' 'vermilion-cheeked' are common. A table has 'dark-blue' feet; the same adjective is also applied to the prow of a ship, to hair, to a horse's mane and to the eye. Fear is said to be chloros (of a greenish yellow). Still, this is hardly more curious or more inexact than Shakspere'sShakespeare's [sic] 'green-eyed monster,' and the current phrase 'to turn green with envy.' It is not easy to discover the underlying idea. The same epithet is translated 'blood-red' when applied to a serpent and 'tawny' when used of the color of jackals. Though the Homeric Greeks were in some respects a good deal more advanced than our Indians, in the appreciation of the beauties of nature, they were not very wide apart. Henry T. Finck, in his 'Primitive Love,' adduces plenty of evidence to prove that the "Indians have no conception of the romantic side of nature—of scenery for its own sake. To them a tree is simply a grouse-perch, or a source of firewood; a lake, a fish-pond; a mountain, the dreaded abode of evil spirits." He assures us that the real Indian and the Hiawatha Indian are just as much alike as fact and fancy. In Homer's circle there was no interest in flowers or blossoms and no mention is made of garlands, although they played so important a part in the social life of the later Greeks. When flowers are mentioned at all it is almost solely on account of their color, which serves as a basis of comparison. One exception that I recall is the passage where one of Priam's sons is smitten with an arrow so that: "Even as a garden poppy droopeth its head aside, being heavy with fruit and the showers of spring; so bowed he his head aside laden with his helm." The Homeric Poems are supremely important for the insight they afford into the early civilization of the people which they portray, but they contain a great deal that is repulsive to our far more refined sensibilities. Empedocles speaks of but four colors: white, black, red and pale green. It is hard to believe that the age in which this philosopher lived knew at most only two prismatic colors. It is more probable that he regarded green and blue, and perhaps some other colors, as derivatives from these and therefore not entitled to separate enumeration. According to