He mentions a certain Philaenis, who enjoyed wearing the luxurious textile for its smell rather than for its color. Although there are few other references to it, the Roman poet Martial alludes to the fact that Tyrian purple, named after the city of Tyre, retained a distinct, rather fishy smell even after it had been made into a garment. Purple dye production was a gritty and often conspicuous, seaside business for those doing the intense manual labor required to harvest it. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California (photo by the author for Hyperallergic). Purple was one of these aesthetic markers, though there were many shades to choose from.Ī ninth century CE gospel lectionary made during the reign of Charlemagne, this lectionary was not made with Tyrian purple, but was likely dyed with an imitation purple made from lichens (Rhein-Meuse region), now at the J. Unlike today, there was a more profound hierarchy of color that could and did advertise status to others. Our word “purple” is derived from the Latin word purpura, which was often applied to the dye used to turn clothing to a rich blueish-red shade. The noun πορφύρα ( porphyra) was frequently used to refer to purple cloth, and is still the root of the name for the purple-hued porphyry stone that Greeks and Romans prized for sculpture, sarcophagi, and even the bath tubs of the ancient world. In ancient Greek, purple had a number of names. From diamonds to coal to Tyrian purple, the workers who create luxury goods often do not enjoy the same status as their products.
During the later Roman empire, these workers were even subject to state control. Although it has come to be known as the shade of royalty, the workers who labored to make the dye in the Roman Mediterranean were often viewed as lowly. Perhaps no other color in history has been so celebrated and so reviled as the color purple. Late second or early first century mosaic likely depicting a murex shell from Rome, and now in Centrale Montemartini (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)
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