Associative Use of Color in the "Aeneid"

Author(s): Robert J. Edgeworth

Source: The Classical World, Vol. 73, No. 3 (Nov., 1979), pp. 167-170
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of the Classical Association of
the Atlantic States
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4349145
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 ASSOCIATIVE USE OF COLOR IN THE AENEID

Our appreciation of the Aeneid may be enhanced by careful attention

to what I call the "associative" use of color terms. Color terms are used
associatively when they link a particular episode with another episode in
the same work. This phenomenon has received very little attention
hitherto, perhaps because it achieves its effects subtly.
I propose to cite some instances of this practice, and then to suggest
that two particular passages in the Aeneid should properly be understood
as an instance of the practice.
A cluster of four colors (purple, gold, green, and white) is used to link
the funeral games in Book Five with the scene in Book Six in which the
dead heroes play games in Elysium. At 5.110-112 the prizes for the games
are listed: virides coronae, ostro perfusae vestes, argenti aurique talenta.
Again, at 5.132-134 the captains are described as shining in purple and
gold (auro . . . ostroque) and wreathed in poplar (populea fronde).
Vergil elsewhere emphasizes that the poplar leaf is of two colors: green
on top, white below (bicolorpopulus 8.276). Then at 5.246-251 prizes are
distributed: laurel wreathes (viridi lauro), a talent of silver, a cloak
embroidered with gold and purple.
When Aeneas arrives at the Elysian fields, one finds the same four
terms used to describe the setting of the heroes at their games: the
pleasant fields (arnoena virecla 6.638-virecia, from the same root
as vireo, is an extremely rare word; Vergil could have used Lucretius'
pabula /aeta here), bathed in purpureo lumnine (640-641), where heroes
play onfulva harena (643; the color of gold, cf. 7.279, 10.134, 11.776) to
the accompaniment of Orpheus playing his lyre with an unprecedented
ivory plectrum (pectine eburno, 647).
This particular combination of colors occurs nowhere else in the
Aeneid.
As a second example, we may consider the associations of green and
white used as a pair, not as part of a larger cluster.
When Aeneas and his companions are sailing from Delos to Crete and
are filled with eager anticipation of finding their new homeland (see the
eager shouting at 3.128-129, the fresh breeze at 130, the aviditas of
Aeneas at 132), we are told that they sail past viridemque Donusam. . .
niveamque Paron 3.125-126. This particular color pair, here associated
with a false arrival, occurs only at one other place in the poem: at the
moment of true arrival (8.82-83).

candida per silvam cum fetu concolor albo

procubuit viridique in litore conspicitur sus

Indeed, the three references to poplar leaves at the beginning of Book

Eight, besides contributing to the Herculean associations of the book,

167

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168 ROBERT J. EDGEWORTH

are further suggestions of this green and white motif: 8.32, 276, 286.
I suggest that this type of effect is sometimes intended by Vergil in
passages where his intentions have gone completely unnoticed by later
critics. An instance of this may be found in his use of the color
term roseus in two passages (2.593 and 6.535) both of which occur in
contexts of great darkness where chromatic adjectives are rare.
Terms of color are not distributed evenly in the Aeneid, but vary in
frequency in rough proportion to the mood of particular passages. I On
the average, a color term occurs in the Aeneid once every nineteen lines;2
but in Book Two, a book filled with terror and gloom, the frequency is
one term every 57.4 lines.3 Significant variations occur within books as
well as among books. In Book Six the opening (golden bough, 1-21 1) and
closing (Elysium, 637-901) are bright with color, while in the central sec-
tion (the descent into Hell, 212-636) such terms are used sparingly.
This phenomenon can be compared to the practice of shooting certain
portions of a film in color and other portions in black and white.4 But the
comparison is not perfect, for color terms are used occasionally in Ver-
gil's "black-and-white" passages. A better comparison might be the
technique whereby color is added to certain parts of a black and white
photograph. When Vergil applies color to certain portions of his poem,
he does so for a purpose.
The gloomy and shadowy narrative of Book Two is interrupted by the
shining apparition of Venus (pura per noctem in luce refulsit, 590) who
speaks to Aeneas with roseo . . . ore (593).
Certain ancient critics found the mention of Venus' rosy lips to be in-
appropriate in a description of the sack of a city; modern scholars appear
to find nothing remarkable about the choice of adjective, perhaps think-
ing it to be merely otiose.5 Otis has pointed out the crucial importance of

I Viktor Pbschl has sensed this (or something similar): "Oberblicken wir das gesamte
Werk, so lasst sich gleichfalls eine grosse Bewegung von Licht und Schatten erkennen. Das
erste Drittel des Gedichtes (I-IV) ist in Dunkel gehalten . . . . Die H6he und Mitte des
Gedichtes (V-VIII) dagegen strahlt im Licht . . . . Das letzte Drittel (IX-XII) ist wieder in
dunkleren Farben gestalten . . .. Dunkel - Licht - Dunkel: die also ist der Rhythmus, der
das Epos in seiner Gesamtheit beherrscht." Die Dichtkunst Virgils (Wiesbaden 1950)
279-82.
2 For the sake of an objective standard, a term is considered a color term in these figures
if it is studied in J. Andre's Iutde sur les termes de couleur dans la langue latine (Paris
1949).
3 If the Helen passage (2.567-588) is rejected, the ratio is 1/55.9. And of the fourteen oc-
currences of "color" terms in Book Two, five are instances of ater.

4 The Wizard of Oz is an obvious example.

s Servius ad loc.: quidam reprehenderunt non convenisse in ruina et exitio civitatis
Venerem roseo ore loqui cum filio. Pseudo-Acro on Horace Odes 3.3.12: 'purpureo ore':
Pulchro, ut est 'roseoque haec insuper addidit ore,' misunderstanding the epithet as otiose.
No comment is made on this line by Papillon and Haigh or T.E. Paige or R.D. Williams.
Conington merely translates the phrase. The only comment on the phrase offered by R.G.
Austin is: "conventional." Of course it is conventional; but to what end is Vergil using the
convention on this occasion?
Pseudo-Acro was, however, quite justified in equating roseus and purpureus. The rose
itself is described as purpureus at Horace Odes 3.15.15 and De Rosis Nascentibus 28; and
Nisus' magic lock of hair is referred to indifferently as purpureus and roseus Ciris; 52,
122, 281, 320, 382. See also Apuleius Metamorphoses6.24.7, 10.29.9-10.

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 ASSOCIATIVE USE OF COLOR IN THE AENEID 169

Venus' apparition: before her appearance Aeneas follows the wrong

course of action, acting from dolor and furor; after her appearance his
familial pietas is reinforced and he forgoes efforts at futile resistance in
order to save his family.6 The apparition marks a turning point; it is
startling and abrupt-as startling as the flash of rose color against the
dark background with which Venus' speech begins.
In Book Six, when Aeneas encounters the figures from his past during
the descent, he does not wish to leave them. The poet states that his hero
was on the verge of spending all of his allotted time chatting with
Deiphobus. If Aeneas had done so, he would have remained immersed in
the past and missed the maturing experience of Elysium-the very expe-
rience which is to liberate him from his preoccupation with the past. The
Sibyl prevents this disaster by harshly interrupting him (537-538):

et fors omne datum traherent per talia tempus,

sed comes admonuit breuiterque adfata Sibylla est:
'nox ruit, Aenea; nos flendo ducimus horas. . .'

These lines should be read carefully to avoid the mistaken impression

that Aeneas' desire to linger with Deiphobus is a matter of trivial impor-
tance. The time in the underworld is given to Aeneas (datum tempus); it
is of limnited duration (this from o,nne); it is for a specific purpose, not to
do with as Aeneas pleases (implied censure in per talia and in traherent).
If he expends all his time here (ofnne lemnpus), as is completely possible
(fors), his mission will go unfulfilled.
Vergil anticipates the jolt which the Sibyl's abrupt words give to
Aeneas by administering a similar jolt to his reader at lines 535-536, in
which he states that Dawn had now driven her rosy team of horses past
the midpoint of the sky. Now, the dawn is traditionally rosy; but is it not
unusual to speak of the dawn at all when the hour in question is past
noon? Instead one would have expected some reference to Phoebus; but
Phoebus is never rosy (except once at sunset, 11.913). ' This is evidence
that Vergil has expended some effort to introduce the term here.
The effect of startling the reader by a bright color reference in a dark
passage, and of doing so by using the same color term with which the
same effect was accomplished in Book Two, is, I contend, intentional.'
In Two Aeneas is doing the wrong thing (settling past scores with Helen)
instead of the right thing (going on to Anchises). In Book Six Aeneas is
doing the wrong thing (reliving the past with Deiphobus) instead of the
right thing (going on to Anchises). (Not for nothing is Deiphobus chosen
for this scene in Book Six rather than, say, Hector: he is Helen's husband
and speaks mainly of her.) This parallel has been carefully constructed:

6 Otis, Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry (Oxford 1964) 243-44.

7 Conington on 6.535f: "The amplification is perhaps a little unseasonable as we scarce-
ly need to be reminded pointedly of what is going on in the upper world ...."
8 Michael Putnam has noted the general parallel, without attention to particular details:
The Poetryof theAeneid (Cambridge, MA 1965) 28-29.

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 170 ROBERT J. EDGEWORTH
Anchises/Deiphobus in Six, Anchises/"Mrs. Deiphobus" in Two.
In both cases Aeneas' fundamental error is the same: he seeks to
remain in Troy (symbol of the past)-the flaming Troy of Two, the
ghostly Troy of Six-and is rejecting the future (Rome). In both cases he
is forcibly turned from wrong path to right path by an exterior force. In
both cases a feminine principle is used (Venus, Sibyl). And in both cases
the reader is jolted by the flash of red amid darkness at the very moment
the transition from wrong to right begins.
Vergil is using the term roseus to half-waken a memory of the earlier
scene, to convey subliminally that disquieting sense of d6ja vu which is
one of his art's finest achievements. And he has accomplished this
sensory link without violence to the established associations of the tradi-
tion: Venus is naturally "rosy,"9 while the Dawn (although out of place
near noon) has a firm claim to the epithet. Vergil is using traditional
associations, not absent-mindedly, but with deliberation for a particular
purpose.

The Australian National University ROBERT J. EDGEWORTH

9 Rosy Venus/Aphrodite: Anacreontea 42 and 53 Bergk (where the Greek cognate is

used), and cf. Anacreon 357.3 Page Poetae Melici Graeci, porphure t' Aphrodite; Aeneid
1.402; and see the passages collected by Barbara Seward, The Symbolic Rose (New York
1960), esp. 11-13. The rose is particularly Venus' flower: Pervigilium Veneris 22 ff.,
Clementi ( = 26 ff. Mackail); De Rosis Nascentibus 15-18.

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