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Besides presenting the theoretical framework on which my views on Greek painting as a scientific and historical phenomenon rest, I offer a detailed analysis of the colors of selected vases and wall paintings as a demonstration of that framework. In some cases a matching analysis from the side of pure form will be presented in a companion volume on periodicity in Greek sculpture (see Introduction).
In carrying out this project I was constantly reminded how deeply indebted I am to my students in the Art History Program of the University of Massachusetts, particularly those in my seminars, and to the students in my seminars in the Division of Classical Archaeology and of Art History at the University of Freiburg-i-B (1976 and 1984) for their sympathy, empathy, criticism and enthusiasm for my ideas. Because of them it seemed worthwhile - and even imperative - to work out, after my retirement, the philosophical underpinnings of my views in written form. Moreover, I am indebted to my colleagues, particularly Laetitia LaFollette and Mark Roskill in Amherst and Eric Forssman in Freiburg, for help and encouragement, and not least to the enlightened policy of former Provost Richard D. O'Brien in providing secretarial assistance to retired professors on a generous scale. I am also indebted to the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut in Berlin, which supported the project by granting me two sojourns, in 1988 and 1989, for the use of its superb library facilities. There have been many others along the way both in this country and Europe who have contributed in minor but never unimportant ways to the completion of this work. These cannot all be named, but it would be most inappropriate not to mention Professors Arthur Zajonc and Bodo Hamprecht of the Physics Departments of Amherst College and the Freie Universität in Berlin, respectively, who patiently suffered my questions about optics and color theory, which I had to understand in order to make sense of the statements of early Greek philosophers. A course in optics at the 1983 summer session of the Rudolf Steiner Institute taught by the late Hans Gebert also stood me in good stead. Moreover, I am deeply indebted to Hans-Georg Hetzel, formerly of Freburg-I-B, for many stimulating conversations about Goethe's color theory, practical demonstrations of various facets of it and discussions of it before paintings in various museums. Two of the fruits of this are the interview recorded in Appendix B and the color plates 40-50 generously prepared by him. I am grateful for useful suggestions about organization of the text to Dr. Karl-Martin Dietz of the Friedrich von Hardenburg Institut (Heidelberg), who read the manuscript at a critical stage and particularly to Professor J. J. Pollitt of Yale University, who convinced me that my ideas on color should be presented as a separate volume.
It is a great pleasure to express my gratitude to the Libraries of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst which, through the good offices of Linda Seidman, Head of Special Collections and Archives, Rachel Lewellen, Librarian for Digital Initiatives, and Charity Hope, Research Library Resident, all of the W.E.B. DuBois Library, have demonstrated the high degree of commitment to humanistic studies characteristic of the University of Massachusetts.
Not the least I am grateful to J.A. Burton, whose lawyer's mind reviewed the manuscript and persuaded me to recast not a few obscurely expressed thoughts.
Abbreviations follow Select Bibliography.
| Fig. 1 | Alabaster vessel Iraq Museum, Baghdad from Warka Third quarter of fourth millennium B.C. H.0.92. |
| Fig. 2 | Sample of Mediterranean marbles Antikenmuseum Berlin. After H. Mielsch, Buntmarmore aus Rom im Antikenmuseum Berlin (1985) pl. 15. |
| Fig. 3 | As fig. 85 (pl. 11) |
| Fig. 4 | Attic Protogeometric amphora British Museum London. 11th century B.C. |
| Fig. 5 | Attic Geometric amphora Kerameikos Museum inv. 2146 Athens. 9th century B.C. |
| Fig. 6 | Attic Geometric amphora NM inv. 804 Athens: detail of frieze. 8th century B.C. |
| Fig. 7 | Middle Protocorinthian IB kotyle British Museum 60.4-4.18: crouching hound by the Hound Painter. 2nd quarter 7th century B.C. |
| Fig. 8 | Protoattic amphora (loutrophoros) Louvre inv. CA 2985 Paris: procession, etc by the Analatos Painter. First quarter 7th century B.C. |
| Fig. 9 | Attic neck-amphora British Museum inv. B210: Achilles killing Penthesilea, attributed to Exekias. 3rd quarter 6th century B.C. |
| Fig. 10 | Attic blackfigure amphora Vatican Museum: Achilles and Ajax by Exekias. Ca. 530 B.C. |
| Fig. 11 | Opposite side of fig. 93 with Return of the Dioskouroi. |
| Fig. 12 | Attic bilingual amphora Staatliche Antikensammlung, Munich: symposia, attributed to the Andokides Painter Ca. 525 B.C. |
| Fig. 13 | Attic redfigure shoulder amphora Antikenmuseum Berlin: satyr and Hermes; attributed to the Berlin Painter. 500-490 B.C. |
| Fig. 14 | Attic blackfigure krater on white ground Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe: Odysseus and ram. Late 6th century B.C. |
| Fig. 15 | Attic white ground cup Staatliche Antikensammlungen inv. 2645 Munich: maenad; attributed to the Brygos Painter. 500-490 B.C. |
| Fig. 16 | Attic white ground lekythos NM inv. 1818 Athens: deceased and living; attributed to the Achilles Painter. 3rd quarter 5th century B.C. |
| Fig. 17 | Roman mosaic NM Naples: Battle of Issos. 1st century B.C. |
| Fig. 18 | Terracotta pediment plaque NM Syracuse: Gorgo holding offspring. Late 7th century B.C. |
| Fig. 19 | Wooden panel NM Athens from Pitsa: scene of sacrifice. 3rd quarter 6th century B.C. H. EAA V, opp. p. 202. |
| Fig. 19 bis | Domenico Veneziano Panel Uffizi Gallery, Florence "Madonna and Child with Saints", ca. 1445 |
| Fig. 20 | Attic white ground lekythos NM Athens: figure and stele, assigned to R Group. Ca. 430 B.C. |
| Fig. 21 | Hellenistic tomb painting at Kazanlak. |
| Fig. 22 | Hellenistic tomb painting at Kazanlak. |
| Fig. 23 | Limestone tomb facade Lefkadia, Greece Painted architectural forms. Ca. 300-275 B.C. H.8.15. |
| Fig. 24 | Detail of fig. 23: Hermes. |
| Fig. 25 | Limestone tomb facade Vergina, Greece Painted architectural forms of "Philip's Tomb". Ca. 340-330 B.C. H.5.3. See M. Andronicos 1989, fig. 57. |
| Fig. 26 | Interior tomb wall Vergina, Greece Portion of "Tomb of Persephone" showing Demeter. H.2.50. Ca. 350-340 B.C. Andronicos 1989, fig. 46. |
| Fig. 27 | Interior tomb wall. Detail from "Tomb of Persephone": head of Hades. Andronicos 1989, fig. 51. |
| Fig. 28 | Detail of fig. 23: bust of Rhadamanthys. |
| Fig. 29 | Roman fresco NM Naples from Pompeii: Perseus liberating Andromeda. 1st century B.C./1st A.D. |
| Fig. 30 | Roman fresco NM Naples from Pompeii: Theseus triumphant. 1st century B.C./1st A.D. |
| Fig. 31 | Roman fresco Vatican Museum Vatican City: Odyssey Landscape I. Second style, 1st century B.C. |
| Fig. 32 | Roman fresco Vatican Museum Vatican City: Aldobrandini Wedding. 1st century B.C./1st A.D. |
| Fig. 33 | Oil on canvas Galleria Doria Pamphili: Aldobrandini Wedding by N. Poussin 17th century A.D. H.2.42 G. Torselli, La Galleria Doria Pamphili (Rome 1969) fig. 385. |
| Fig. 34 | Roman mosaic NM Naples from Pompeii: stage scene. 1st century B.C. |
| Fig. 35 | Mosaic Terme Museum Rome inv. 171. Nilotic scene from Via di Porta Lavernate, Rome. Ca. 250 A.D. H. (field) 1.85 |
| Fig. 36 | Roman fresco NM Naples from Pompeii: Rocky sanctuary. 1st century. A.D. |
| Fig. 37 | Terracotta figurine NM Athens inv. 1986.271 Pella: lady in heavy garments. Hellenistic period. See The Search for Alexander (1981) New York Graphic Society, number 148, pl. 22-D. |
| Fig. 38 | Goethe's Dark Spectrum Photo Hetzel |
| Fig. 39 | Goethe's Dark Spectrum Photo Hetzel |
| Fig. 40 | Goethe's Light Spectrum Photo Hetzel |
| Fig. 41 | Goethe's Light Spectrum Photo Hetzel |
| Fig. 42 | Diagram clarifying rule of atmospheric colors in light/dark conditions Photo Hetzel. |
| Fig. 43 | View illustrating principle: red results from dark before light Photo Hetzel. |
| Fig. 44 | View illustrating principle: blue results from light before dark Photo Hetzel. |
| Fig. 45 | Diagram illustrating additive colors Photo Hetzel |
| Fig. 46 | Diagram illustrating subtractive colors Photo Hetzel. |
| Fig. 47 | Preliminary form of Goethe's color wheel Photo Hetzel. |
| Fig. 48 | Diagrammatic articulation of Goethe's color wheel Photo Hetzel. |
| Ill. 1 | Directionality of water |
| Ill. 2 | Directionality of air |
| Ill. 3 | Combination of water-air directionality |
| Ill. 4 | Density of the directions |
| Ill. 5 | The four elements in form of a rectangle |
| Ill. 6 | Indications of density added to rectangle of Ill. 5 |
| Ill. 7 | Sense qualities of the four elements |
| Ill. 8 | Five elements in the form of a circle |
| Ill. 9 | Kandinsky's axes |
| Ill.10 | Sense qualities and elements in circular scheme |
| Ill.11 | Sevenfold organization of man and heaven |
| Ill.12 | Macrocosmic processes |
| Ill.13 | Microcosmic processes |
| Ill.14 | Comparison of macrocosmic and Hippokratean microcosmic processes |
| Ill.15 | Hippokratean processes after Schlepperges |
| Ill.15 bis | Black and white as bridge colors |
| Ill.16 | Qualities associable with the Dark and Light spectrums |
| Ill.17 | Expanded version of the basic, four color paradigm |
| Ill.18 | Color relationships in the Classical period |
Besides individuals mentioned in the above list, I wish to acknowledge the generous cooperation of the following in establishing my illustrations:
Dr. Gertrud Platz (Berlin); Dr. Dyfri Williams (London); Dr. Friedrich Hamsdorf (Munich); Dr. Jutta Stroszeck (Athens); Prof. Dr. Klaus Fittschen (Athens); Dr. Michael Maas (Karlsruhe); Dr. Vincent Brinkmann (Munich); Dott. Giuseppe Voza (Siracusa); Stephano de Caro (Naples); Don Raffaelle Farina sdb (Vatican); Prof. Ronald Wiedenhoeft (Littleton, Colorado).
For the unimpaired human being, color is the most constant, inescapable and omnipresent of the sense impressions. The world is simply always colored, even at night, even in outer space. Therefore, any systematic attempt at explaining the phenomenon of color necessarily presupposes a world view and thus has real cosmological implications, whether these are recognized and spelled out or not. By the same token, such an attempt is in itself a symptom of considerable intellectual sophistication. We find this precondition in Greece at the time Empedokles provided the culmination of the philosophical speculation which had been carried on by the so-called Ionian School. In a poem (or poems) he undertook to explain the nature of the world as consisting of the four elements called earth, water, air and fire, each one being the expression of a deity as the divine force behind its dynamic manifestation in the visible world.
There is written evidence that he and other thinkers of the time associated four colors: black, white, yellow and red with those elements, although the pairing off is not immediately clear. They also took black and white to be the primal colors, all remaining colors being mixtures of these two in some way. That is approximately the extent of what one can compare with the modern physics of color which, with some historical distortion, is generally referred to as Newtonian color theory.
Leaving aside Newton's own, not inconsiderable cosmological speculations, which proved to hold little interest for those who accepted his physics, we find the irreducible core of his theory in the claim that all colors (excepting black and white which were not regarded as colors) are contained in light. A very real cosmological implication of this view - surely not foreseen by Newton himself nor articulated in the scientific tidal wave that followed upon his work - is that denial of a role to darkness in the genesis of colors devaluates darkness in all its other manifestations to a state of non-being. It may not be immediately apparent, but I believe it is inevitable, that acceptance of this hypothesis has come with a heavy philosophical price: it obfuscates the role of the tragic, the dark, side of human existence. This might be apparent in the oft heard reaction to tragic events: if there were a God, he would not would have let this happen. The Greeks were under no such preconceptions about the role of divine powers, as Gertrud Kantorowicz and others have pointed out. That ancient people, perhaps more than any other, accepted the dark side of life as an integral part (rather than as a senseless interruption) of reality, just as they accepted darkness (black) as an integral part of color. It cannot, therefore, be surprising that it was they who invented the tragic drama as an artistic expression of the way human beings live, learn and die.
Even if one senses the importance of the gulf between the Greek and the modern orientation to color discussed above, it may seem an intellectually daunting task to try to use it as a basis for interpreting Greek painting. Thus it was not until, in the pursuit of my own avocation of painting, I became aware of the depth of the color theory (Farbenlehre) of J.W. Goethe (and began, as he recommended, to experiment with a prism), that I started to understand how that scanty tradition mentioned above can be focused, as it were, onto a fully intelligible image of reality out of which the Greeks seem to have worked.
Nevertheless, in order to pursue such a goal, which by its own terms has to be approached in an unusual way, I had literally to invent new methods and new concepts which may at first sight seem strange. But the operative question is, would these methods and concepts have seemed strange to the ancient Greeks themselves? While, of course, no answer to that question is possible, it at least suggests what I have tried to do, that is, expunge from consideration all of our own preconceptions (many of which might well seem outrageous by the standards of ancient peoples) and follow carefully what clues exist. Yet this does not need to be tantamount to abandoning the perspective we enjoy by being so far away from the ancient world in time.
Written documentation is not abundant and what exists is to a great extent incomplete or even fragmentary. The corpus of terracotta colored materials, especially pottery, offers many specimens for consideration, but there is a dearth of evidence in most other media, especially painting on panels and walls, at least until the later fourth century B.C. From this evidence in its totality I succeeded in making certain inferences which came together in the form of various diagrams and charts. I strove for a theoria in the ideal sense of philosophical speculation which might lead directly to empathy with the philosophical and artistic concerns of creative Greeks; for the mere fact that philosophers and artists associated each of the elements with its own specific color bespeaks an objectivity which is totally foreign in our age of individualism and subjectivism. The reader ought to bear this in mind in judging my efforts at color interpretation (of works of art). This factor, and all it implies, is surely the reason why ancient artists, in contrast to some contemporary artists, neither could nor would have explained why they used this or that color; they (and everybody) knew at some level why they did. If we are disappointed with the apparent vagueness of references to color in ancient poetry and even (in late times) treatises on color, that is surely to be explained on the basis of different cultural expectations.
In this latter respect my hope is that this study will complement and supplement the best of modern color studies, in which one will certainly include Vincent Bruno's Form and Color in Greek Painting : this has been an indispensable companion to my own wrestling with the subject of color. To go from that book to mine requires, I think, not so much any "leap of faith" as a willingness to go on reasoning on a different level, but one that was prepared for.
My suggestion, therefore, is that readers not turn at once to my interpretation of the meaning of colors in specific works of ancient art, but rather at first give some attention to my systematic examination of the color qualities of each of the four elements (see illustrations 12 and 13, Chapter II) and to my discussion of the polaric nature of spectral phenomena (see Chapter III, The Two Spectra of Goethe's Color Theory and An attempt at a Holistic Interpretation of Color Meaning ). Since even classicists, let alone general readers, may not be accustomed to think in terms of the strict polarity which is implicit in much of Greek thought, it would be appreciated if readers would consider this before passing judgment on my application of the polarity principle. I have provided various inducements to do this in the text, in sometimes lengthy notes, and in the Appendix.
So far I have discussed the relation of the canonical four colors to the four elements. But what about the elements themselves? What do the words earth, water, air and fire mean to the person of our era? Let me assume, for the moment, that these constituents are not registered as parts of a philosophical system but as figments of fifth century lore. In that sense, at least, they do survive in modern consciousness and might justifiably be regarded as ghosts of once living concepts, their vitality having been dissipated. The reason is not too far to seek. Elite academic thought, as reflected by historians of ancient science, has a world view that is unaware of, or else discounts, the dynamic quality of the microcosmic aspect (that concerning organisms) of Four Elements philosophy, an aspect that interacts at every level with the macrocosmic aspect (environment in the widest sense). Yet it is precisely this microcosmic aspect that has lived on just below the surface, as it were, of western consciousness. This will be explained in detail in Chapter I, but there is an easy way to form a preliminary impression of the dynamic interaction between the macrocosmic/microcosmic spheres. Instead of thinking about earth, water, air and fire as four substances, we can regard them as four principles basic to existence: the material (nourishment), the liquid (irrigation), the gaseous (atmosphere), and warmth. If an organism (a microcosm) is deprived of all food, it will normally consume itself and starve; if totally deprived of liquids, it will dehydrate quickly and die; if deprived of air, it will suffocate in a very short time; and if totally deprived of heat (as in technologically produced extreme refrigeration), it would die almost instantly. In an anthropocentric world view like that of the Greeks, the relevance of reasoning of this kind (not this particular reasoning is being ascribed to them) would be at once apparent. It may perhaps also provide a starting point for an understanding of the macrocosmic/ microcosmic orientation that led to the synthesis made by Empedokles.
Since we live in an age in which science (the equivalent of philosophy in ancient times), clothed in immense authority, undertakes to understand life as a system of chemical reactions steered by infinitely small microorganisms which have, from the human point of view, beneficent or hostile intentions (all of this in a universe which is openly regarded as baffling and the subject of constant new speculation), some readers may need some help in trying to grasp my detailed reasoning about actual qualities that can be associated with various levels of macrocosmic/microcosmic activity (summarized in Ills. 12-13). As this help I present in Chapter I a systematic explanation of how I understand both the historical and the derivative philosophy of the four elements, together with a single striking example of visual form (Figure 1) which shows how the views being developed here can be helpful in understanding the form and content of an early work of art.
That statement brings me to the subject of form, now mentioned for the first time (except in the title of V.J. Bruno's book). It is, of course, obvious that the core of Greek artistic activity cannot be reached on the basis of color alone: a way must be found to correlate color with form. The converse is also true: form cannot be fully grasped without color. Yet just this latter is constantly attempted. Art historians are generally disinclined to delve into color theory (although since the beginning of the 19th century various artists have done that). That disinclination probably rests on the abstractness of the Newtonian color theory with its mathematical concepts that have no obvious cultural connections. Again, fortuitously, Greek sculpture can and must be dealt with as pure form because whatever color it may once have had is gone. Despite this, form implies color and color implies form. This means that I should also look at Greek sculpture in the light of Four Elements philosophy, and I have indeed spent much time and energy doing so. It has turned out that the great problem involved in this is the nature of periodicity. The emphasis and methods required to deal with that subject are so different from those of color study that it must constitute a totally separate book: Greek Sculpture and the Four Elements . Suffice it to report here that, on the practical side, the terminology and dating listed below (and henceforth used) are fully explained and justified in that study.
| Early Archaic | 720-ca. 630 |
| High Archaic | 630-ca. 560 |
| Late Archaic | 560-ca. 525 |
| Protoclassical | 525-480 |
| Early Classical | 480-460 |
| High Classical | 460-430 |
| High Classical Reaction | 430-400 |
| Late Classical | 400-ca. 340 |
| Protohellenistic | 340-ca. 300 |
| Early Hellenistic | 300-ca. 230 |
| High Hellenistic | 230-ca. 160 |
| Late Hellenistic | 160-ca. 50 B.C. |
To speak proleptically for the moment, it can be said that certain factors in the history of Greek color usage themselves have a strongly indicative effect on the problem of periodization and these will be discussed at the appropriate points in my text. However, the greatest benefit in concentrating specifically on color theory in one volume may be that the difference between the zeitgeist of the Greeks and that of our own time emerges in a particularly clear and untrammeled way (or at least so I hope). I refer with that term to what makes it difficult for us to get outside the assumptions of our own age and see them as time-bound (how will they look to the 27th century A.D.?), that is, not necessarily even on the right path. May we not gain something by looking back sympathetically at the experiences leading, as far as we can reconstruct them, to the quite different assumptions of an earlier age?
"And first he (Bacchus viewing the doors of the palace of Neptune) saw, depicted with a wealth of colour, the confused features of primeval chaos, with a representation of the four elements about their divers functions. Above was fire, sublimely independent of matter and, ever since Prometheus stole it, the source of life to all living things. After it, soaring lightly and invisibly, came air, that found its habitat more readily and left no corner of the world, however hot or cold, unfilled. Earth, disposed in hills and valleys, was clad in green swards and blossoming trees, whence the beasts that inhabited it derived their varied sustenance; while, scattered about the land mass, water was clearly to be perceived, not merely nourishing many a species of fish, but supplying the humidity essential to existence." Camoens, The Lusiads Canto VI (W.G. Atkinson translation).
There are overwhelming obstacles to assured understanding of Presocratic philosophy - the mental equivalent to Greek art in the generations from the High Archaic to the High Classical Periods. First, our knowledge of it depends entirely on fragments preserved by later, sometimes very much later, authors and their commentators. There is not even certainty in many cases that the preserved fragments were actually written by the philosophers with whose names they are associated and, in any case, the context is lost. 1 How disastrous that is need hardly be insisted upon. All this gives rise to an ample secondary literature interpreting, at a vast distance of time, a large body of fragments of ancient secondary literature.
Secondly, the potentiality for misinterpretation of the intent of words was already formidable in the last mentioned and is increased by an inverse ratio in modern secondary literature; for any words we use for translation and interpretation are freighted with a ballast of associations accumulated over thousands of years 2 and - what is more problematic - filtered through minds which can hardly escape being affected by a skeptical, materialist-positivist world view. However much we may feel that the Presocratics form the first link in the chain leading to this view, it would have been historically impossible for them to have had anything like it. Their rather poetic musings on how divine forces actually operated physically in the world are reminiscent of the way Galileo and Descartes emerged from a religious cocoon while hoping to enhance the glory of God with their discoveries. Yet in Greece there was no powerful church to restrain natural philosophers and public opinion was largely tolerant. To the outside world their ideas, if noticed at all, must have seemed as strange as the constantly changing style of the statues gracing temples and public places. In this milieu the Four Elements philosophy and contrapposto were in place by the middle of the fifth century (close dates are hard to come by 3 but see Chapter II, The Ancient Sources , Demokritos section D, paragraph 3): on the one hand the first scientific method for a profound exploration of reality and, on the other, a formula (the Canon) for a profound understanding of the human body-mind interaction, a subject never previously brought to full consciousness. The two men responsible for this climax, Empedokles and Polykleitos, might be called midwives who delivered the two perhaps most revolutionary impulses that informed mature Greek culture and its ever widening influence. 4 Yet the Four Elements philosophy, though ultimately prevalent, was to some extent misunderstood and contested by contemporaries of Empedokles, whereas the contrapposto stance invented by Polykleitos seems to have been immediately and instinctively grasped and became the touchstone for all later Greek sculpture (and beyond).
Although some generalizations about Presocratic philosophy can be made, there is no help for the verbal impediments to interpretation pointed out above. It has seemed to me therefore to be useful to consult the uncontaminated non-verbal record afforded by Greek art: at least theoretically and grosso modo a richer experience of the two categories should be attainable by allowing ideas derivable from the one to reflect onto the other and vice versa. That will be the method pursued in this study. Given that the current wisdom says that these are two unrelated aspects of Greek culture which should be kept apart, my results may seem unfamiliar to those who expect, after all, pure art historical analysis with perhaps a few references to what was going on in contemporary philosophy, or else a review of Presocratic philosophy with a few happy parallels from sculpture and painting. I will not fulfill either of those expectations, especially since others could do that better. My whole purpose in writing is to see whether it is feasible to pursue consistently the philosophical quality of Greek art and the artistic quality of Greek philosophy - both as vital aspects of "Greekness".
It is not within my competence to enter technically into the dispute as to how much Presocratic schools owe to influence from Oriental sources. The prevailing tendency, with notable exceptions, seems to be to deny this as much as possible, 5 whereas in regard to art the opposite tendency has long been characteristic of archaeologists. This question of the Greekness of Greek creativity, in whatever category, is obviously of profound significance for accuracy of historical interpretation but at the same time demonstrates, in the hefty divergences of opinions about the same facts, that feeling and willing in individual coloration play no less a role in modern scholarship than they did in the sixth century B.C. In this light I present my opinion as to what was really different about the modality of thought introduced in Miletos and Ephesos, Samos and Croton from what had previously prevailed. It will be well initially to set aside the well-worn formula: from mythical to rational thinking, the complexities of which G. S. Kirk 6 has graphically demonstrated. More generically, the Greek tendency was to pursue a line of creative endeavor tenaciously over generations, until the "right form" for it was attained, after which creativity expressed itself horizontally rather than vertically, in variants. Rhys Carpenter's 7 derivation of this judgment from the history of the orders seems to me to throw light also on the history of figure style in Greek ceramics. While each of its stages, beginning with silhouette style in Greek pottery, continuing with blackfigure in Corinthian and Attic pottery, and ending with Attic redfigure style, had its own rationale, collectively they represent an unceasing striving to find the most effective way of depicting in two dimensions the naked human form, simultaneously being worked out in an unbroken series of three dimensional stone statues. It is not without interest that the development of redfigure is generally considered to have peaked in the first half of the fifth century when the final struggle to achieve what we call contrapposto in sculpture was taking place. Thereafter redfigure drifted into a more theatrical stance and was exploited, especially in Magna Graecia, rather than developed further in the original sense indicated above. To some extent this parallels the exploitation of the orders once they were finally crystallized.
The kind of formal order which emerged in Attic Geometric and Archaic painting has less tangible but certainly recognizable parallels in the literary endeavors of Hesiod - and then in the next stage in the parallel stream of Orphic inspiration: Pherykydes and Pythagoras, and then in the Ionian School. It is not difficult to see that each of these was searching for the "right" explanation of the experiential world, but their methods differed so greatly that to find a common denominator is not easy. Certainly what did not change from an earlier stratum of experience is that in all of these the foundation of existence was felt to be divine, even if traditional religious formulae could be put in doubt or even discarded. 8 It is exactly this which removes them furthest from our intellectually self-eviscerated age. To assert that Antiquity, no less than the Middle Ages, was an Age of Faith (even though, of course, the definition of faith has to be broadened accordingly) is not to help anyone understand that. But to visualize through art that, in the critical period we are considering, the "unbroken" world of the Archaic Greeks became the "broken" world of the Classical Greeks 9 , might help.
The stones (sc. minerals) have a fixed condition
and the plants have their growth.
The dumb beasts have all that and their soul pictures as well
but the power of reasoning (is) peculiar to human-kind.
Adapted from Chrysippos as quoted by Clement of Alexandria (I. von Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, no. 714 Leipzig 1903)
By the middle of the first millennium B.C. cumulative human experience with the basic structure of the earth and its denizens was evidently sufficiently extensive and inwardly absorbed that a "philosophy" - a rationalization - of that structure could be formulated. Based on well over a century of tentative ideas and speculation 10 about the elementary composition of the world, a literally classic theory of four equal and commensurate elements was formulated by Empedokles at the latest and taken up by Plato and Aristotle. They pointed out that earth, air, fire and water do not only exist in recognizable isolation but also are constantly combined in nature by mixing into innumerable inorganic and organic compounds, giving the basis for substances and beings that came to be summarily classified as mineral, plant, animal and man. The order is hierarchical with mineral having only one element (earth) and man having all four.
The elements were understood equally as substance or the processual activities associated with it (solidification, liquefaction, rarefaction and combustion) 11 and certain qualities were seen as inherently associated with the four: hot, cold, wet, dry; and the four temperaments and perhaps more. The interdependence and commensurability of the microcosmic and macrocosmic forms of the elements under the influence of attraction and repulsion (love and strife) were fundamentally assumed. But I must stress that this summary is an ideal description of what was in ordinary life probably more felt and instinctive than articulated. In the light of this specific schema we become aware that, by the time of its formulation, in art the division between man and god was still being drawn with self-evident precision. The consciousness of an earlier millennium about it is reflected in the well-known ritual vase from Warka (Figure 1).12 Earth - or the mineral realm - is represented or at least implied by the supporting base of the receptacle itself, above which the realm of water is depicted as a conventional design. Over that is a frieze depicting the realm of plants - which live from water into air - and then above the plants a frieze showing the realm of warm-blooded animals who also live from water and air into warmth through their blood and breath. Above this again is a taller frieze of men, servitors, who embody the sublimation of inward warmth to self-conscious activity in the service of the gods. Then towering over all this is a taller frieze depicting the goddess (or her priestess) toward whom all the activity and resources of the world flow. The divine world honored by the height of the frieze floats above the tangible world. At this stage it must have been impossible to conceive of the fourfold world without divine overseers, as is equally evident in the art of the Pharaonic state, the First Babylonian Dynasty and in the Biblical account of the Hebraic theocracy.
This is the conception inherited by Greece from the past and still vitally and visually alive in the pediments of Olympia. Yet what the Ionian philosophers as a whole achieved was the detachment of the concept of certain individual underlying elements from the total scheme so that these could be individually scrutinized and evaluated as to their qualities. The process of intellectual inquiry thus initiated was prima facie specialized and one-sided, a tendency that appears to be reflected also in the concentration of Archaic sculptors on a narrowly defined schema of the human body - the youthful male or kouros type - as the key to unlock the fundamental riddle of the body-soul relationship. Other themes, even the female body, were neglected accordingly. This creation of philosophical inquiry and of a basic statue type of consummate perfection constitutes ipso facto a new stage of human self-consciousness that separates the Greeks from anything in the older civilizations, however much they may have taken materials from these.
It is again altogether in keeping with the Classical mentality that the discovery of substance per se , at the price of one-sidedness, should have been drawn back by Empedokles into a dynamically balanced philosophical system. He at least is the first thinker we know of who specifically proclaimed the commensurability of the four elements and their incessant interaction (this includes human thinking). Yet there is no reason to doubt that Empedokles and, in fact, most philosophers, continued to recognize the existence of a higher spiritual realm and the compatibility of the highest expression of the four elements: man himself, with it.13 Nevertheless, consciousness henceforth began to be drawn subtly and inevitably to phenomena and processes of the visible world; in effect, the divine factor came to be relegated to an extraterrestrial sphere considered to be, as it were, a fifth element - aither in Aristotle's De Caelo, then quinta essentia -obviously more subtle than warmth. As the quadripartite conception showed itself increasingly useful and versatile, the elimination of the divine factor from practical considerations (the quintessence becoming eventually the bailiwick of the alchemists) brought a certain freedom to downgrade or even ignore it.
In Hellenistic times a kind of pallid forerunner of modern "secular humanism" may have arisen; but Greek sculpture, drama and mainstream philosophy never totally lost a sense of spiritual realities, in whatever shading these might find expression. Paradoxically, from an early stage of its development onward, the Greek mind was also instinctively and creatively turned to the physicality of the world by the Four Elements theory, an explanation so deeply rational and fundamentally apposite to the human condition, that it could still today be profitably taken into account by the scientific establishment which all too often remains in a maze of mathematical abstractions as it pursues power over nature (see Select Bibliography , paragraph 2).
At least two historians of ancient art have found it necessary in their analyses 14 of Greek sculpture to refer to various "levels" or "souls" inherent in the human make-up. And they did not do this theoretically or as a quaint theory of the past. However, since their use of this concept was not systematic - and could not have been without full scale discussion of the Four Elements theory - I shall attempt to provide that systematic investigation here. The concept of souls is undoubtedly the least understood aspect of the parallel structuring of the macrocosm and microcosm although hardly the least known. There are enough references to it in Plato and Aristotle to guarantee that, in some way, the total system existed in antiquity as experience and perhaps tradition. In fact, once it is grasped, indications of it - even fairly systematic ones - can be recognized in earlier cultures, particularly that of Egypt. Yet modern scholarship on the whole has not shown much interest in that subject.
There are gaps, sufficiently plentiful that one can proceed only by analogy and deduction. On the one hand we have in the Timaeus Plato's description of the earth as an organic World-Soul enveloped by a (physical) body. As Cornford 15 then put it: "The parallel of macrocosm and microcosm runs through the whole discourse...and the soul itself is a counterpart, in miniature, of the soul of the world." But for us too much is assumed to understand this easily. We also have the Empedoklean, Platonic and Aristotelian total commitment to the inter-mixing (krasis) of the four elements as the basis of all physical and organic reality. On the other hand, we have Aristotle's description in De Anima of the structure of the human being, whose parts bear a relationship to the processual spheres of the four elements. If not much else is spelled out, we can assume either that it was too obvious to need comment, or was discussed in lost writings or - perhaps most likely of all - that the full systematic implications of the microcosmic-macrocosmic four elements theory lay beyond the particular interests of ancient philosophers. After this we find rather its traces, as a world view taken totally for granted, in such things as medicine and alchemy, for centuries, even millennia to come.
Stated in the most reduced terms the system requires that the members of each living being correspond in quality to subsuming similar members of the living world organism in which they in fact exist and without which they would perish. This is, for example, most easily understandable in the case of the individual physical body, which cannot be conceived of without its mineral component - for there would be no skeleton or, in the lowest echelons, visible substance. The recurring fantasy in films about "invisible men" demonstrates, moreover, that in the modern artistic imagination, at least, the human being is not limited to physicality but is shot through with invisible processes on which sentience and consciousness rest. It is precisely these processual systems, of which only the effect can be observed, and without which the physical body becomes a corpse, that comprise the upper three levels or souls of the four member system. The four member system is most concretely documented by Aristotle (although he tends to take the physical level for granted and thus does not actually speak of four). Though at present the least regarded aspect of the Four Elements theory, this quadripartite articulation of the human being has remained as the essential frame of reference of the western world and still survives - largely unexamined and uncoordinated - in our conceptual life as physical anthropology (study of skeletal systems, among other things), physiology (study of the vital systems, particularly glandular), psychology (study of the emotional and mental capacities, particularly as carried by the nervous system) and ego. Since modern psychology has no concept of soul as such, it overlaps into conclusions about the ego, which in the Greek system corresponds to a separate fourth member, nous , the cogitative faculty, not present in animals. In effect, the crowning term of the four - all derived from the Greek language and fossilized in our time - should be philosophy. The latter, deprived of its former relation to peoples who understand themselves in fourfold terms, has had no choice but to become increasingly abstract and peripheral in human affairs.
Despite the present tattered condition of the system, it was used in a dynamic correlative sense as late as the 19th century by Ignaz Paul Troxler (Basel) and others for medical and philosophical conclusions 16 and even later by Nikolai Hartmann (1882 - 1951) as a framework for his philosophical system. 17 It has been used for the interpretation of ancient Near Eastern art by Walter Andrae (see note 12). To the historian's eye the full integration - or re-integration - of this system by Rudolf Steiner (1861 - 1925) as the basis of his cosmology indicates that the four elements theory is still evolving. 18 To my knowledge Steiner, working closely with concepts from Goethe's scientific work, is the only modern thinker to give full weight to the macrocosmic aspect of the microcosmic foursome. Above the physical body (which Aristotle dealt with en passant : de An. 411a he uses the term etheric body for Aristotle's threptikon or nutritive soul, astral or sentient body for the aesthetikon or sensitive soul and ego for nous . His subordinate parts of the nous are likewise documented in Aristotle (see my study of Greek sculpture). The etheric body of an individual (plant, animal, man) regulating the vegetative, liquefying processes of life is dependent on the etheric body (roughly atmosphere) of the earth organism as a whole. The individual sentient body (of animal, man), seat of the feeling life, is correlative to the sentient body (a collective phenomenon, from the individual point of view) of the earth. The ego (of man alone) is related to a macrocosmic ego of divine nature.
All of this is, explicitly or implicitly, a Hellenic view 19 of human reality. It is probably safe to say that its existence, in varying degrees of explicitness and understanding, was never seriously challenged in principle until the intellectual effects of the nominalistic controversy of the Middle Ages began to condition the definition and practice of natural science. Even then it was too massive to be totally displaced, as noted above, and it has also had a succession of powerful defenders, e.g., Kepler and Goethe. Nevertheless, the nominalistic world picture that originated in medieval philosophy and culminated in the materialism of the 19th century has us all in its grip, despite our perhaps valiant efforts to escape it 20 - even though 20th century quantum physics and relativity theory have discredited much of it (in a manner, unfortunately, too abstruse and impersonal to penetrate or fructify public consciousness 21 ). The natural sciences each pursue their own agenda to infinite particulars while the social sciences make what they can of the results of the elite sciences. Nor can ancient studies stay above this obtrusive intellectual turmoil. This is not said in a spirit of criticism of its practitioners but to explain why I am impelled to offer this study: it is my way of trying to make sense of the crisis 22 sketched out above.
The term color theory no doubt brings to mind for many people only Newton's theory that colors are created by the refraction of (white) light. So pervasive is this doctrine in contemporary life that the existence of other explanations of color - if one has heard of them at all - is considered at best a matter for historians of science.
However, historical research cannot be objective if it proceeds on the basis of Newtonian paradigms and vocabulary as a standard of legitimacy. For one imposes thereby criteria which are, or may be, alien to the thinking that produced different paradigms and vocabulary. Obvious as this proposition may seem in the abstract, the history of scholarship on Greek ideas of color, recently reviewed by Heinke Schulz in Die Farbe Purpur im frühen Griechentum, makes it clear that taking that proposition seriously has proceeded only in slow stages.
It is equally clear that an attempt to understand the way Greek thinkers dealt with color on their own terms has the best chance of resulting in some enlightenment if undertaken by someone who has a personal standpoint out of which a question has arisen, giving rise to more questions. This is likely to require a certain inventive capacity, for what one researcher sees as a vital sign may figure hardly at all in the thought structure of another. This is obvious enough in the differing approaches likely to be used by the philologist, historian of science and historian of art; but on this complex subject, it might not be less operative in the work of any two practitioners in the same field. Yet all may add a few tesserae to the mosaic of ancient reality that can never be fully restored.
In the case of the book mentioned above the motivating question was the role played by literary references to a color which is usually translated into modern languages as purple. The author begins with a concise discussion of passages in ancient authors referring to the nature of color. This offers a good starting point for me as well: prior to presenting my own review of the ancient testimonia from the point of view of the particular question that motivates me, I shall retrace Stulz' path 1 briefly to bring readers directly into what is a sphere of reasoning and observation that needs much thought. For what is at once evident is that in that sphere the tools of thought are the four elements: fire, air, water and earth. These broad terms need to be defined with the utmost precision - and will be in my own study. However, for the present, I shall introduce them by reviewing the discussion of Stulz.
It is not accidental that Alkmaion of Cretona, one of the earliest sources for a theory of perception, was a Pythagorean physician. His work is known from references in Theophrastus which plunge into a profound physiological problem: how does the eye see? It sees through the water that surrounds it (dia tou perix hudatos). But that statement raises a host of other questions, hardly answered by further references to fire "which the eye (also) has" and to that which gleams, and to translucence. 2 In effect, one is confronted by a philological maze from which exit is possible only by rather arbitrary interpretations. Stulz' conclusion: the ray which transmits the color of an object to the eye is a kind of fire.
However obscure to us, the ideas of Alkmaion provided the frame of reference in which the later Presocratics: Empedokles and Demokritos, moved. The teaching of the former is summed up in his famous simile comparing the eye to a lamp. As the lamp radiates rays of light, so does the eye, which contains eternal fire shut up within it - though able to emerge through channels in the surrounding water. Earth and air can easily be factored into this process (as described in a fragment). Empedokles relates this to perception of white and black by the eyes for the purpose of explaining blindness by day and by night. Stulz found no other discussion of color perception by him and denies that a famous passage in which the philosopher mentions color practice of artists (see Chapter II, The Ancient Sources , Empedokles, E) proves that he entertained a theory that four colors were a basis for creating further colors by mixture. Yet it must be granted that he had developed a theory of perception which - combined with his principle of "like gravitates to like" - would indeed offer the framework for a four color theory.
Furthermore, even though there is no record of an Empedoklean perceptual theory for senses other than sight, his basic principle of emanation would obviously be applicable to them: there are emanations of all things that ever came into existence ( panton eisin aporroai, hosa egenonto ). Moreover, the emanations from the eye are corporeal (even light is). But while we might conceive of these as particles, they are not material in the sense of something dead; rather they are compounded of the active principles of the four elements - ultimately, divine forces. A famous passage describes how these forces, quasi nature forces, operate in the world with each one controlling certain basic emotional responses in the human psyche (see Chapter II, The Ancient Sources , Empedokles, A).
If Empedokles did not produce a recognizable color theory, Demokritos did insofar as he attempted to explain the characteristics of particular colors by reference to the characteristics of the atoms constituting them. Thus the color called white has perfectly smooth atoms which cast no shadows; the nearest analogy being mother of pearl, which suggests not only light but also lustre. Translucence is also to be connected in some way with white. The fact that canals are postulated somewhere in the complex of atoms impresses on us how difficult it is really to understand the technicalities of fifth century thought. Black also has such canals but in combination with rough-surfaced atoms, whereas red is allowed to consist directly of fire (light) atoms. Thus in the required mixture for purple: white, red and black, it is white that provides the lustrous quality. Warmth is associated with red, not merely because fire was the only source of energy known to the ancient world, but also because it denoted for Demokritos the interchangeability of the atoms associated with warmth, soul, nous and movement. Thus the element fire is not defined as a specific force in nature but as an unstable constellation of atoms (at least as implied by Aristotle - but other statements of that author cast some doubt on this).
In any case Demokritos conceived of colors as so many quantities of energy (light), ranging from a pure form of it to a total lack of it (black). Such reasoning comes from a quite different sphere from the idea of colors laid on an artist's palette: colors are not something laid on objects but energy equations of the objects themselves. In fact, Demokritos would deny the existence of artists' colors as such. To complicate matters for us, Anaxagoras - without being an atomist - had the same opinion about the nature of color.
Like Demokritos, Plato also reckoned with self-radiating objects; but Plato thought that their rays meet and mingle with the pure fire (rays) placed in all human eyes by the gods. Thus seeing (or not seeing) depends on the size, strength and speed of the rays emanating from the objects, while perception of the various colors depends also on that process. The most dynamic confrontation with the eye results in the effect called lambron (see Chapter III, The Evolutionary Aspect of Colors, paragraph 6), while the least dynamic reaction results in white. A reaction weaker than that of white fails to reach the eye at all, which produces black. Thus a scale is established running through lambron, erython (red), leukon (white) and melan (black). In effect, for the colorless neutral atoms of Demokritos, Plato substituted a system of fire (light) reactions as color products. The most potent of these, lambron , actually overwhelms the fire of the eye like a lightning flash - and expels it. This leads Stulz to say that color intensity seems more important than hue. The spiritual nature of the color experience is underlined by the words of the dying Sokrates that, in the ideal world, hues are the same but more lambron than in our world [But if physical eyes are required for the experience of color, how is this possible?] The dynamic quality of Plato's particles depends partly on their being tiny, with sharp corners, and swift. These qualities allow them to activate the blood, split up and digest food, generate movement and in effect constitute the life processes of all creatures. Colors are a (graduated) effect of this principle.
Aristotle rejected the notion that a fiery ray emanated from the eye and reflected back from the objects to create sight - on the grounds that if this were so, night vision would be normal. By the same token he objected to the theory of emanations from objects, since the eye does not perceive them when the objects are pressed against the closed eye. Still, he did not attempt to eliminate the idea of physical context altogether, for he postulated the necessity of a medium between the eye and its percept, and reached back to the Presocratic translucence (diaphanes), which exists in water, air and translucent objects. Light is the agent (energeia) that reveals translucence as an incorporeal state ranging from bright to dark. Insofar as this flows into objects it ceases being mere light and reveals color as well as their substantiality. The color of the object in turn puts the medium itself in motion and this is transmitted to the eye. Thus color, like light itself, is immaterial and a state or form of energy. However simultaneous this process may seem to be, conceptually it involves several distinct stages: object activates medium, medium become translucent, medium activates eye. Obviously, the role of light is to make this process possible, but Aristotle attributes no movement to it, whereas the resulting color is an activator (kinetikon) of the medium.
Aristotle also deals with the way colors arise. Objects consist of a mixture of elements with colors that reproduce said mixture. Colors are a mixture of black and white (light and darkness). These two colors strike the eye with such velocity as not to be perceptible as such. Color probably arises from superimposition (in accordance with the distribution of elements) taking place on the basis of arithmetical principles. Among the five colors (besides black and white) recognized by Aristotle is purple - comparable to a chord in music. Since this is the point of departure for Stulz, I append her comment (her pp. 61-63):
Since yellow is apparently bracketed with white, the first degree of diminished white is purple. Its origin from black and white is demonstrated in various cosmic phenomena. For example, the sun appears purple behind smoke or mist. In the sky the impact of white and black should often provide the occasion to observe the play of bright colors, but by day the light of the sun prevents this and by night all shades of blue and green are swallowed up by the darkness with only purple being light enough to be seen.
Purple does not eclipse blue and green through its lightness (value) - in which case we would be weighing colors - but through its glow (saturation), that is, its color intensity. This is quite alien to our way of thinking. Since for Greek eyes color intensity replaces value as the most important color characteristic, purple can appear in that context as the weakened but still second most important color of light. Also, Aristotle proposed purple as the strongest color-energy after light itself.
The author of the post-Aristotelian De Coloribus assumes the reflection of the sun from objects as colored light to be the origin of color but resorts to the definition of light as a stream of small particles rebounding off objects - in contrast to Aristotle and also Plato. Pure colors are never seen because of the consistent modification of (visible) objects through light and darkness. The colors themselves are dependent on the mixture of elements in the objects and - in the case of organisms - additionally by the influence of heat and moisture.
Stulz concludes:
Even within this final document, the two characteristics of Greek color sensibility appear:
- Color is rays of light or fire.
- Color reflects the state of the object to which it belongs.
At this point the reader may well ask what I have gained from preparing the preceding summary of another scholar's work. This has, in fact, brought clearly and forcibly to mind exactly that side of Greek color experience which the modern mind will most readily grasp, namely, the intellectual continuum from the Greeks to ourselves in the concept of light - with which (to say the least) color is involved - as consisting of rays; for rays were taken up by Arabic science and converted into essentially a mathematical abstraction, as it were, which lay to hand for Newton, whence it has come to form an integral part of modern optics. And, despite the up-front ubiquity of chromatic colors in human vision, their specific existence had an ancillary position to light (and, as we have seen, could even be denied) from the beginning investigations of the Greeks onward. Their speculations were, then, also the beginning of the science we know as physics. I mean this in the following way. Greek ideas on light and color played out against the larger scientific concept of a four elements world. Because there is no ancient treatise specifically analyzing that conception - a little reflection will suggest that there could hardly have been such - even historians of science glide over it. My contribution is to have "thought out to the end" the implications of the interaction of the elements both in general and specifically in relation to color. This is presented in pictorial form in Chapter II.
Nevertheless, in contrast to the preceding, what is not of great interest to modern commentators (including Stulz) but cannot be sufficiently stressed, is that Greek color science evolved from direct consideration of human vision as processes of fire and water in the functioning of the eye-structure itself. It rested therefore on an organic-anthropocentric foundation, whereas the problem has since become - and especially since Newton - a matter of quantifiable abstractions; there are only hints of this direction in a few Greek thinkers, particularly Aristotle. Present day physiology has to make the best of these abstractions and obviously has to go in a direction opposite to that of holistic concepts.
In the ongoing development of color theory over the centuries only one creative mind really set itself against the last-mentioned view and thereby rejuvenated the problem, so to speak, in the original Greek sense: J. W. von Goethe. His inspiration to do so, however, did not come from a knowledge of Greek color history but from very contemporary considerations. But in due course he did acquire that knowledge in as much detail as was possible in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and was well aware of his historical position in regard to it. Indeed, his predilection for the "Greek way" was so marked that the concept "Goethe and the Greeks" has evoked much literature in its own right. What I believe has never been systematically investigated is the degree to which Goethe's own organic-anthropocentric standpoint created a color theory that appears to incorporate and to expand much for which the basic attitudes of Empedokles, Hippokrates and Plato laid the basis. 3 This will be a secondary theme that emerged from my primary motivation.
Although the theory of the four elements is well known, the concept of a theory of four colors is virtually unknown, even among many scholars in the ancient field. What is that concept? It refers first of all to a seemingly insoluble problem in the history of Greek painting, arising from references in Pliny the Elder and Cicero, to the use of quattuor colores: black, white, yellow, and red in certain Greek paintings (see note 1). Attempts have been made to understand these references on the basis of philology and art history as well as of the actual remains of ancient painting. Some very valuable and plausible results (to which I shall refer as needed) have indeed been obtained. My interest in this subject, however, is much more comprehensive, that is, to understand what it is that makes these four colors so special (this, of course, involves the other colors!) - insofar as this can be gathered from the natural philosophy of the Greeks themselves and from modern exoteric and esoteric conceptions of the nature of color.
The ancient tradition in regard to a connection between the Four Elements theory and the Four Colors theory - for so it must be called - is not only meager and sketchy but, on the face of it, enigmatic. Yet the parallel positioning of the two concepts, e.g., in Empedokles, Demokritos and Plato, is so noticeable that one cannot really doubt whether the Greeks regarded them as being correlative, but only whether they connected each of the four elements to a particular one of the four colors.
It would naturally be ideal if the writings of the ancient philosophers answered this question directly. However, the absence of a single unmistakably attested commitment in this regard, though discouraging, does not have to mean that no such connections were made. It could, for example, have seemed so obvious to the authors concerned that they never thought to mention it, or the point might never have figured in their arguments. Or their theorizing might not have reached a stage that suggested any systematic discussion of the matter. I refer here to the sphere of physics; at least in the sphere of physiology - thus indirectly - we have some information on the problem.
One should also take into account that the Four Elements theory itself apparently did not achieve a systematic form until the poem of Empedokles in the Classical period. Its basic components were certainly recognized in the Archaic period, but not brought together. Moreover, this theory was expressly a concern of the intelligentsia, which at the time of Empedokles was beginning to turn away from the physical science of the Ionians to explore other aspects of philosophy: thus there would have been no urgency about such a tangential aspect of Empedokles' thought. In fact, we might suppose that philosophers could have been less interested in pursuing such connections than artists (for purely artistic reasons). On the basis of all this the appropriate question seems to be - not whether there was any conscious equating of the two quaternary series but - whether such an equation can be logically posited. In order to begin work on this problem, we may turn our attention once again to testimonia concerning color.
It is essential to have an overview of those ancient passages that throw any light whatsoever on the problem of how the four colors were combined in any way with the concept of four elements. To this end I reproduce and comment on such passages either with original text and translation or with translation alone; in a few cases of longer arguments summaries are used. My concerns, of course, are not purely philological, as in the basic studies of W. Kranz, H. Dürbeck and others. Unless otherwise indicated, translations are my own.
The passage that serves as keystone for this entire study is a fragment of the works of Aëtius, a physician of the late 6th century A.D. Herman Diels 1964, 31, 21 A92 cites Aetius, I, 15, 3 (D. 313:)
to Plato, Meno, 76D: "SOC. Well, do you speak of certain effluences from things, in agreement with Empedocles? - MENO. Certainly. - SOC. And pores into which and through which the effluences travel? - MENO. Yes, indeed. - SOC. And some of the effluences fit certain of the pores, others are too small or too large? - MENO. Yes. - SOC. And do you say that there is such a thing as sight? - MENO. Yes, I do. - SOC. Well, "take my meaning" from this, to quote Pindar. Colour is an effluence from shapes which is commensurate with sight and perceptible." (Plato, Meno Edited with Translation and Notes by R.W. Sharples, Chicago 1985.) To this Aëtius commented: "(Empedokles) declared that color fits the pores of vision. And the four colors: white, black, red, yellow are equal in number to the four elements."
It would seem that Plato and Aëtius are independently referring to the same passage in Empekokles' works. Sharples, 136, notes that the definition of color given by Socrates is not specifically that of Empedokles. The second sentence of Aëtius is generally regarded as a further piece of information from the work quoted (as I have translated it), although in the absence of the complete context its relation to the first sentence is uncertain. However, the fact that Empodokles was here discussing a physiological question, and that Aëtius by his profession could be expected to refer to the same subject makes it doubtful that he was throwing in a proposition from the color physics of Empedokles' day, particularly since in that sense the statement as worded would make a rather naive proposition. It seems more likely that the mention of the number four has a Pythagorean flavor (see Chapter II, The Ancient Sources, Pythagoreans, A, for a similar constellation in the writings of Aëtius). Therefore, I believe that the statement in question may have something to do with the (Pythagorean-derived?) Hippokratean microcosmic tradition of four colors and four humors. This would be weak evidence indeed to connect Empedokles with a definite system of color-element equations, especially since his own fragments offer no support for such an assumption.
A selection of passages from the Peri Physeos in the translation of Kathleen Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Cambridge, Mass. 1962) following Diels' compilation is offered to convey a sense of the manner of Empedokles' thinking and feeling as he presents his theory of the elements in a graphic, non-abstract way.
(A) Diels B21; Freeman, 54 "Observe the sun, bright to see and hot everywhere and all the immortal things (heavenly bodies) drenched with its heat and brilliant light; and (observe) the rain, dark and chill over everything; and from earth issue forth things based on the soil and solid. But in (the reign of) Wrath they are all different in form and separate, while in (the reign of) Love they come together and long for one another. ....For these (Elements) alone exist, but by running through one another they become different; to such a degree does mixing change them."
Empedokles here connects the sun, white and warmth in one all-encompassing conception. Yet 
and even more 
- not very outspokenly a color term - are certainly used in this passage in a poetic sense, so that no technical conclusions can be drawn from them. In this connection note should be taken of a citation from Plutarch in the following:
(B) Diels B. 94; Freeman, 61 "And the black colour in the bottom of a river arises from the shadow, and the same thing is seen in deep caves." Here the shadow on the river bed is called black but not the water itself; this is a common sense observation, not color theory. In the following passage the technical color word 
is more directly connected with materiality:
(C) Diels B.67; Freeman, 59 "For in the warmer part the stomach (i.e. the womb) is productive of the male, and for this reason men are swarthy and more shaggy." Here black is connected with firm substance measured by the density. The following passage summons up the lively intermingling of forms and color:
(D) Diels B.71; Freeman, 59 "But if your belief concerning these matters was at all lacking - how from the mixture of Water, Earth, Aether and Sun (Fire) there came into being the forms and colours of mortal things in such numbers as now exist fitted together by Aphrodite...." This proposition is illustrated by the following:
(E) Diels B.23; Freeman, 55 "As when painters decorate temple-offerings with colors - men who, following their intelligence, are well-skilled in their craft - these, when they make many-colored pigments in their hands, and have mixed them in a harmony, taking more of some, less of another, create from them forms like to all things, making trees and men and women and animals and birds and fish nurtured in water...." For our (D) above suggests that Empedokles was familiar with a (Pythagorean?) doctrine of numerical proportions (of elements) in the composition of colored organisms; (E) shows that he was familiar to some extent with artists' practices. One can not make out exactly what is meant by 
(not translated by Freeman but given as "bunt" by Diels) or by 
(Diels: vielfarbige Gifte.) A final passage rounds out the nature of the system described in (A) above.:
(F) Diels B.17; Freeman, 54 "All these (Elements) are equal and of the same age in their creation; but each presides over its own office, and each has its own character, and they prevail in turn in the course of Time. And besides these, nothing else comes into being, nor does anything perish..."
(G) Metaphysics I iv 7 (985a, 30f.) from Loeb edition, 1975 "Empedokles, then, differed from his predecessors in that he introduced the division of the causes, making the source of motion not one but two contrary forces (Love and Strife). Further, he was the first to maintain that the so-called material elements are four - not that he uses them as four, but as two only, treating fire on the one hand by itself, and the elements opposed to it - earth, air and water - on the other, as a single nature..." This virtually implies that Empedokles emphasized the extraterrestrial source of all heat, the sun, as a force polar to the other, more earthbound elements.
(H) Diels A.69a: De Sensu 59 (D. 516, 9)
On the subject of colors, E. said that white is that of fire, black that of water.
If this information was culled from such places as (B) above or from the following, it can have little bearing on color theory. Moreover what is suspicious in this sense is that no other colors are mentioned.
(I) Diels A.86: De Sensu 1ff. (D.500) 7
E. says the pores of fire and of water respectively are crossed, white things being recognizable by the fire pores, black things by those of the water. For they are adjusted to one another. And he said that colors are brought to the vision by effluence.
Empedokles here is speaking of physiological modalities, which can hardly have anything to do directly with color-element equations, especially since there are no more visual routes to accommodate red and yellow sensations. Yet it is highly interesting that he proposed a cross-sensory functionality - quite in the mold of contrapposto with its three dimensional contrast of left-right, forward-back, and up-down.
Adding up the available evidence, we are in little doubt that Empedokles was acquainted with a four color physiological system, though the evidence is more indirect than direct. Despite a persistent tendency for water to be associated with dark effects, it does not seem necessary to suppose that he disagreed with the rational equation of black with matter (earth). See especially (G) above. Theophrastus' report on the color of fire and water in (H) may also be meant physiologically. In any case, it is tantalizing because the passage continues: "the other (thinkers with the exception of Empedokles) claim that white and black are the original colors and that the other colors arise from mixtures of these, and also Anaxagoras spoke only of these two." Also, Aristotle still represented this view (see Chapter II, The Ancient Sources, Aristotle, paragraph 2) and it is not clear actually how Empedokles differed from it (for he too in the available passages speaks of only these). Krantz makes an inference from (E) that Empedokles derived warm and cool colors alike from mixing the four colors (see note 2). This seems to me (as also to Stulz, see above Chapter I, Prologue, In Particular, paragraph 3) to be an absurdity which one cannot foist on the words of Empedokles. I prefer to remain with the fact that Empedokles nowhere discussed the four colors in a philosophical way either in the macrocosmic or the microcosmic sense.
(A) Diels A97. Sext. Pyrrh. hypot. I 33
We are opposing contrived thoughts to appearances, just as Anaxagoras opposed to the fact that snow is white the fact that snow is frozen water, and since water is black, isn't snow also black?
(B) Diels A98 Schol. Hom. (A) zu 161
Since (water) is black by nature, says Anaxagoras, then smoke is also black from the water released from the (burning) wood.
These two passages recall the statement attributed to Empedokles (H). Anaxagoras (A) is, of course, a sophistic play with concepts which nevertheless implies that he routinely associated water with black. The source of all references to black water - not merely that of Anaxagoras(B) - must be the highly poetic and dramatic Homeric allusion to a pack of blood-sated wolves drinking from "the surface of the black water from a dusky spring" ( Iliad , XVI, 161). That this became a proverbial trope even in the speech of philosophers is not surprising. What would be surprising would be an attempt on their part to justify the poetic usage in the sense of physical philosophy. That being impossible, I interpret Anaxagoras (B) in the same sense as (A): a sophistic or ironic statement, for the statement in itself is almost irrational: the smoke from burning wood is normally white (even though enough of it can blacken other objects - from the residue of the chemicals of the wood, not the water in it). I have already suggested the true explanation for the image in the discussion of Empedokles (B). Of course atmospheric effects may also play a part in the effect of darkness of water.
(A) Aëtius (plac. I) H. Diels, Doxographi Graeci (4.ed. Berlin 1965) 313 Plutarchi Ept. I,15, 1-7)
Color is the visible corporeal quality. The Pythagoreans call the visible surface of the body skin-color...The followers of Pythagoras (regard) white, black, red and yellow as the elementary colors (the families of colors). The differences of the colors (of bodies?) derive from what mixtures of the elements are involved.
This highly important passage was included by Goethe in his history of color theory (see note 3). What is remarkable is the juxtaposition of a purely physiological consideration and a broad generalization that apparently may indirectly refer to macrocosmic colors, perhaps even to the Dark spectrum (see Chapter III, The Two Spectra of Goethe's Color Theory, diagram); for I believe that the word 
in this particular context might be translatable as root, that is, root-colors, hence the four irreducible spectral colors involved in the creation of the physical earth (see Chapter III, The Evolutionary Aspect of Colors, paragraph 3). Certainly there has to be some deeper knowledge behind such an otherwise mysterious reference to these four colors. The fact that it seems never to have been explained may mean that it could not be explained at that time in publicly comprehensible terms. Yet we know that the concept was used in ancient medical practice in a way sufficiently definite that it survived many centuries. The two passages of Aëtius now cited complement each other and link Empedocles into the circle of the early Pythagoreans.
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(B) Aristotle, Metaphysics A.5 (986a) The Works of Aristotle , VIII, translated by W.D. Ross:
Other members of this same school (Pythagoreans) say there are ten principles, which they arrange by cognates - limit and unlimited, odd and even, one and plurality, right and left, male and female, resting and moving, straight and curved, light and darkness, good and bad, square and oblong. In this way Alcmaeon of Croton seems also to have conceived the matter, and either he got this view from them or they got it from him; for he expressed himself similarly to them. For he says most human affairs go in pairs, meaning not definite contrarieties such as the Pythagoreans speak of, but any chance contrarieties, e.g. white and black, sweet and bitter, good and bad, great and small. He threw out indefinite suggestions about the other contrarieties, but the Pythagoreans declared both how many and which their contrarieties are.
What is significant here for our theme is the fact that an interest in both light and dark and black and white as polarities was "in the air" at the time Empedokles must have been working.
(A) The most important passage occurs in Galen's On the doctrines of Hippokrates and Plato (Corpus medicorum Graecorum V 4, 1,2 Berlin 1980 mit Uebersetzung von Phillip de Lacy) Liber VIII 5, 9-12):
For (Hippokrates) worked out in great detail the generation of the humors, their varieties, their powers, and what humor is dominant in any region, season, time of life or condition of the body. Yet there was no need for Plato to go through all these matters as Hippokrates had done, just as there was no need for Hippokrates to inquire why the humor phlegm is white, blood is red, bitter bile is yellow, sharp bile is black.Hippokrates himself gave a starting-point for the discovery of these causes, as for example when he diagnoses the states of the body from the colors of the tongue, saying that the tongue is blackened by a sooty burning. For just as soot outside (the body) is naturally produced from lamps, pine-torches, and many other oily substances, so also in the bodies of animals something akin to soot is often generated when the humors, especially the oily ones, are overcooked, etc.
The indications given summarily in this passage are also scattered through Hippokrates' Peri Physeos Anthropou e.g. IV, 1-4 (yellow, black), VII, 14-17 (white), V, 10-12 (colors in general). Also in Peri Chymon I, 1-2 (colors in general), XIX, 4-7 (color of skin). The continuous arguments of Hippokrates for the correctness of the Empedoklean synthesis of the four elements is the best proof of the power of conviction it inspires and at the same time a fascinating introduction into the intellectual climate of the later fifth century.
B. Hippokrates On Diet (Corpus Medicorum Graecorum I 2,4 Berlin 1984 mit Uebersetzung von Robert Joy) I 2,3-4. 1:
L'homme et tous les autres animaux se composent de deux (éléments) diffèrents par leur vertus, mais complèmentaires dans leur action, le feu et l'eau. Ensemble, ils se suffisent à eux-mêmes et à tout le reste: séparés, ils ne suffisent ni à eux-mêmes ni à rien d'autre... Chaucun de ces deux (éléments) a les attributs suivants: le feu a le chaud et le sec: l'eau le froid et l'humide. Chacun tient aussi de l'autre un attribut; le feu, de l'eau, tient l'humide, car il y a de l'humidité dans le feu; et l'eau, du feu, tient le sec; car il y a du sec aussi dans l'eau...
There is an unmistakable note of opposition to Hippokrates-Empedokles in these words. The author of the tract wants to stay with two and resists a quadripartite system. On what is this dualism based - for it is operating with the same opposites: warm-cold and moist-dry with which Empedokles created his quadripartite scheme?
(A) Diels 55A 123 Aristot. gen. gener. et. corr. A2 316a 1:
And so D. thought that there are no colors as such, for color arises from change.
(B) Diels 55A 124 Aët. I 15, 11 (D.314)
Some say that the atoms, taken collectively, are quite colorless and that the feeling that (sensuous) qualities exist arises from things which must logically be without any qualities.
(C) Diels 55A 125 Aët. I 15, 8 (D. 314)
D. says that in nature there is no color. For the elements - solids as well as the void - are without qualities. Things compounded from them have acquired color on the basis of arrangement, proportion and movement, of which one resulting factor is their rank, another their shape and position. With these factors (outer) appearances are in accord. In reference to the impression of colors arising from them, there ar four varieties: white, black, red, yellow.
(D) Diels 55A 126 Aristot. de sens. 4 442b 11
Demokritos calls white smooth, black rough; he refers taste to the shape of the atomic figures.
Theophrastus
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summarized the color theory of Demokritos at some length and criticized it rather harshly. We learn that Demokritos reckoned with four root-colors (
), and offered a long disquisition on the qualities of black and white, especially in the matter of rough and smooth, which were determined by atomic composition. Theophrastus objected specifically (79) that to assume more than black and white as root-colors - the usual procedure - was to invite difficulties. This must be a sign that Demokritos was the first, and apparently the only, thinker to attempt a scientific investigation of the relationship of the four canonical colors. That he did not achieve viable results is understandable from the fact that he did not undertake this on the basis of spectral conditions - about which he probably had no inkling. Theophrastus, taking the position of the lofty critic, gave the results a proper drumming without himself suggesting any real solution to the difficulties he brought up or attempting an original defense of the two-color theory. If anyone else had made any significant attempt to explain the four colors scientifically, Theophrastus would surely have mentioned it here; in fact this is the best evidence that Empedokles totally avoided the problem, though he might have questioned the two color theory (see Chapter II, The Ancient Sources, Empedokles, I).
Can we in any case find the point of departure for the reasoning of Demokritos? First, we may notice that two of the testimonia (B, C) are from the writings of Aëtius, the physician. Secondly, Theophrastus (de sens. 78) remarks: "although (D.) holds that the colours, like the savours, are endless in number according to their combinations..." and he uses in this context the word 
, which is exactly parallel with 
: both can refer to juices or the smell of juices. The inspiration to mention explicitly the parallel cases of colors and juices is easiest to explain in terms of the medical equation of four colors and four humors, while in both cases the innumerableness of instances is owed to the possibility of subtle and subtlest variations in the atomic composition (in other words, through structural krasis!).
If this reasoning brings us anywhere near the actual thought patterns of Demokritos, it shows how great was the influence of Empedokles on his contemporaries, even those who rejected his theory. If Demokritos saw a virtue in the concept of four elemental colors and four basic humors, and a type of krasis (i.e. mixing atomic combinations), he was bound to land in difficulties without the four elements as well. This circumstance was presumably the basis of Theophrastus' disenchantment with the explanations of Demokritos. At any rate, probably the most compelling ground for seeing the starting point of the latter's reasoning in the contemporary medical theory of four humors is his use of 
for yellow, for this equivalent comes directly out of Hippokratic writings
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and indeed is the preferred usage in that context. Putting this right silences at once much criticism, beginning with Theophrastos (or translations of same), and eliminates sense-distorting translations of testimonia that give the impression that Demokritos was treating 
as the complementary of red. Demokritos was indeed not that naive. And it is to be noted that Aëtius himself did not employ 
but 
- both words referring linguistically to various saturations of yellow.
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Demokritos did not substitute green for yellow in the four color canon, nor could he have rationally done so. Moreover, complementation of colors was not a factor in Greek color theory in the fifth century (see Illustration 18).
Given our irremediable uncertainty on external grounds about the chronology of many thinkers of the fifth century, one is obliged to seek the logic of the developing intellectual life. Some version of the Pythagorean microcosmic four color system may well have been generally known in the earlier part of the century, as that would accord with the evidence of painting (see Chapter IV, Panel Painting, The Classical Period, paragraph 5). On this basis Empedokles could have formulated his theory of four macrocosmic elements, whereupon a perhaps more technical medical theory of four humors and their colors could emerge and stimulate Demokritos. Precisely the formulation of Aëtius (C above) that Demokritos spoke of four varieties of color (
can almost be translated as species here) recalls the formulation of the same author that the Pythagoreans spoke of four 
: families, roots, elements.
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And in the larger sense, it would seem that the basic conception of the four elements had to be in situ before the atomists could offer a partial replacement for it.
A quite perceptible difference in time separates the work of the great thinkers of the fifth century and that of Plato. It is just that difference that clarifies the effect of the earlier work on the creation of what we call Classical culture. We have already had occasion to remark on a certain failure of logicality and consequentiality in the thought-structure of Leukippos-Demokritos, specifically on the unresolved juxtaposition of, on the one hand, a physiologically evolved color system that actually corresponds to real life-processes as understood medically at that time, and, on the other hand, of a hard, mechanical conception of "basic building blocks of the universe" (as we might now phrase it) in terms of atoms that are colorless, devoid of qualities and feeling. Indeed, Theophrastus himself (de sens. 68) makes this same criticism of inconsequentiality in no uncertain way, using the terms of his day.
The intellectual bias of the atomists was quite at odds with the spiritual convictions of Empedokles and his temporally removed successor, Plato. The latter could, to be sure, appreciate the idea of atoms to the extent that these may presuppose a mathematical order in things, that is, a kind of order in which Plato had the deepest faith. But for Plato, this order was entirely governed by divine force and intentions, while Demokritos seems to have subscribed to a non-sequitur in this respect. First, he took what is basically an agnostic position:
We know nothing about anything really, but Opinion is for all individuals an inflowing (? of the Atoms).(Diels B-7; Freeman, 93)
Yet one must suppose that he shared the basic conviction of Leukippos:
Nothing happens at random; everything happens out of reason and necessity. (Diels B-2; Freeman, 911)
The Platonist would ask, if we can know nothing for certain, how can we know about atoms, and if atoms are not plan-less, where does the plan come from and, above all, why and how can totally empty things produce sensations of qualities through mere combinations of atoms in their structure? Demokritos must have anticipated some of these objections - in a way that would hardly have satisfied Plato (e.g., Diels B-11 on two kinds of knowledge). But the basic difference in orientation is not bridged.
From this introduction we can turn to Platonic ideas on color. For the purposes of this investigation it is most fortunate that Konrad Gaiser (1965) already assembled and commented on the passages in Plato that bear on this. Having referred to that I will simply extract from his work the points that are pertinent to the problems that have been set out in my investigation.
In the matter of the basic unresolvedness of the atomic theory, Gaiser already surmised that Plato was standing on the same spot where Goethe found himself when confronted by the color theory of Newton: that Goethe who, as the defender of a holistic conception of man and world, was aroused to fierce opposition by the methods of a natural science which, in an almost uncanny parallel to Demokritos, divided up the world into a bloodless, abstract mathematical thought-structure of subsensory, indefinable forces on the one hand and, on the other, a subjective world of qualities lacking basically any locus in reality. With this before us, we must call attention to the fact that the Four Elements school of philosophers ought to have been obliged by the logic of their point of view to investigate the macrocosmic nature of the four colors - as Demokritos, to his credit, tried to do - and their attributability to individual elements. Did Plato attempt to follow this logic (for it was his conviction that the Empedoklean conception of a macrocosmos and microcosmos with one interlocking, inseparable nature was valid)? The answer is indeed no, but to understand that - for it is not necessarily equivalent to a denial of the proposition on his part - we must recall that from the beginning the subject of color had always been a physiological question for the Greek natural philosophers (how does the eye receive color impressions?), not a speculative matter (what is the ultimate nature of color, etc.?). For whatever reasons, and not rising to the challenge of Demokritos on this matter(!), Plato simply accepted the tradition, dealt with the problem in relatively short order and did not go beyond physiological considerations. Thus, his discussion of color in the Timaeus (68) remains totally noncommittal about the macrocosmic implications of the fire and water that effectuate color sensations in the vision, and these are the only two elements mentioned at all. This is, of course, not to imply that Plato could not have said more if obliged to do so; but he must not have considered it necessary or appropriate. In regard to the mixtures of the four colors that produce other colors, what Plato says may have a reference to the atomists' views: he deliberately refused even to speculate on the mathematical proportions that are involved in this process, for he believed that human intelligence could not (and should not try to) encompass the supersensory part of this process. Again in this respect he was a forerunner of Goethe who hardly used mathematics 9 and only hinted at the supersensory explanation of color.
If Plato averted his attention from macrocosmic color, Aristotle did so even more. An index that seems reliable enough of the direction color studies veered into is the Peri Chromaton, a tract in the Aristotelian stream: one gets no clear definition of what the root-colors ( Peri Chromaton, 1) are, while black is virtually written off as a color in an almost dismaying pre-emption of the Newtonian view of dark as the absence of light. Thus the breadth of Plato's spiritual horizon became contracted; this is a side of Plato's color views that must still be commented on.
The four traditional colors are retained in the Timaeus - almost; that is, black, white and red certainly, but yellow? "Bright"
(
), which apparently breaks the sequence, may perhaps not be so much an intruder as a disguised yellow. For yellow itself is defined by Plato as a mixture of red, white and bright - whereby the resulting yellow arrives at exactly the same point where prismatic yellow stands, i.e., darker than white and lighter than red. Bright must therefore logically be described as "light-enhancing", as something that assures yellow its place but presses more toward the light side and thus lends shine and lustre. One is reminded of a primaeval yellow like gold itself, which is traditionally associated with moral, even divine, qualities. In terms of my
Illustration 16 Plato seems to be adding transcendent white to noetic red and white to achieve an ennobled human color. Granted that Plato's colors are not pigmentary mixtures but theoretical conceptions,
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the color bright is a thoroughgoing symbol of Platonic idealism: the lifting of the human being above his unregenerate level, as this would be symbolized by the unadulterated supersensory yellow.
The general orientation in regard to the four colors of this greatest of Greek scientists has already been touched on. In two places he deals with the nature of colors, their origin and selected physiological problems. These passages: de sensu , cap. 3, 439f. (Parva Naturalis) and de anima , 418f. are too long to cite or summarize, since they deal only tangentially - but then in some cases tantalizingly - with our concerns. An example of this is de sensu 442a (translation W.D. Ross):
Savours and colours, it will be observed, contain respectively about the same number of species. For there are seven species of each, if, as is reasonable, we regard Dun [or Grey] as a variety of Black (for the alternative is that Yellow should be Classed with White, as Rich with Sweet): while [the irreducible colors, viz.,] Crimson, Violet, leek-Green, and deep Blue come between White and Black, and from these all others are derived by mixture.
If this list is cropped, as allowed by Aristotle, to the following seven colors: crimson, violet, green, blue, black, white and yellow, then we have the basic colors of Goethe's Dark spectrum (assuming that blue and yellow have been combined): (on this spectrum see Chapter III, The Two Spectra of Goethe's Color Theory, diagram). However, the order given by Aristotle and his uncertainty about alternatives discourage any thought that he has direct knowledge of that spectrum. It does, however, show that the iron grip of the four colors on earlier Greek thought (through and including probably Plato) has been broken and a freer concern with the whole range of physical colors was possible. See also the comment on the rainbow (see Chapter III, The Other Colors, paragraph 3). Again, in groping for a theory to explain the differences in color, Aristotle ( de sensu 439b) deals with the idea that they are constituted of varying ratios of black and white in such a way that - if one substituted dark and light for black and white and then introduced his concept of a transparent medium ( de anima , 418b) - one would be within a stone's throw of important considerations discovered by Goethe. Yet all these advanced ideas never took on a usable, experimental form, for this could only have been given by the prism. It is likely that they were not understood anyway by Aristotle's contemporaries; by comparison the writer of the tract Peri Chromaton must be classed as naive. The sparks given off by Aristotle's fertile mind did not set fires until far in the future.
H. Diehls, Doxographi Graeci , 312 Aetii Plac. I. 15. 6; N. Festi, Frammenti Degli Stoici Antichi (Bari 1932) 82 no. 9 with further references.
Zeno, the Stoic philosopher, said that colors constitute the first determinant of (the form of) matter.
This extraordinary statement, out of all context and the only fragment of Zeno on the subject, stands furthermore isolated among the statements about color of any later Greek Philosophers. Yet, it has received very little attention. A. Long and D.N. Kelley, The Hellenistic Philosophers: Translations of the Principal Sources with Philosophical Commentary (Cambridge 1987) obviously did not find this passage worth recording, even though it gives a glimpse of something potentially more interesting than the repetitious discussion of color as a secondary quality among authors cited. Perhaps the most extensive comment is that of Clemens Baumken, Das Problem der Materie in der griechischen Philosophie (1890) 348, who explains it in the following way: "The Stoics, on the other hand, who see the immediate criterion of matter in something visible to the senses, extensible in three dimensions, naturally look for the essential qualities of things in their sensuously tangible make-up. To these they, along with the Epicureans, attribute objective factuality - and no further investigation required - just as Zeno finds in color the most primaeval factor in the formation of matter, which otherwise has (at that stage) no qualities." In using Zeno's statement to justify a Stoic definition of matter, Baumken may be not only reading into it much from his own 19th century feeling for materialism but actually quite missing the point, for it could be part of a really insightful philosophy of color not pursued or shared by any of Zeno's followers; it should be borne in mind that the source of the fragment is Aëtius, who was a physician and hence by definition more likely to have been a four elements humanist than addicted to atomic physics. I believe that the real significance of Zeno's statement has to be left open.
In the Protoclassical period the Pythagoreans probably gave out a theory of four colors adapted either exclusively, or at least principally, for understanding the medical implications of the four-membered human (microcosmic) organism. This must nevertheless have been general enough to have been of great interest and importance to artists, as reflected in the so-called four color system of ceramics (white-ground category) and the tradition concerning Polygnotos. The significance of the white background can virtually be guessed from the qualities associated with white in Illustration 16 (see my extensive discussion Chapter III, Preliminary Remarks on the Meaning of White in the Classical Period, paragraph 5). At any rate, the microcosmic color system could hardly have been arrived at (by the Pythagoreans) without a corresponding reference, at least, to the macrocosmic parallel. In fact, ancient sources imply this and there is no obvious effort to conceal it. It is everywhere implicit in the four color system of medicine and art. Paradoxically, however, in dealing with the Four Elements theory no philosopher seems to have investigat
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