Gli Etruschi a TRIESTE e nel suo retroterra

MIRAMARE

 

di Massimo Pittau. 

Trieste (Venezia Giulia). Sino al presente risultano sconosciute sia l’origine del centro abitato, sia quella del suo nome. Però l’uno e l’altro risultano conosciuti fin dall’epoca classica, dato che Tergeste, Tergestum è citato da Pomponio Mela (ii 55 e 57), Plinio il Vecchio (Nat. Hist. iii 127-128), Térgeston da Claudio Tolomeo (iii 1, 23), Tergéstē, Tergéstai da Strabone (v 1, 9).

 TRIESTE, PANORAMA

Per l’etimologia il toponiomo è stato riportato a una supposta base *terg-, illirica oppure venetica, che avrebbe avuto il significato di «mercato», ma questa derivazione ha giustamente suscitato le perplessità di Giovan Battista Pellegrini e di Carla Marcato (dti).

Per parte mia invece ritengo che il toponimo sia di origine etrusca e precisamente derivi dall’antroponimo etr. tarcste, che è un gentilizio corrispondente al cognomen lat. Tergeste (rng 411). Il gentilizio etrusco è citato in una iscrizione incisa su un cippo funerario trovato a Montaione (FI), del IV/III sec. a. C. (tle, tetc 411). (alternanza a/e; suffisso -st-; Norme 1, 5) (detr 393).

Quasi certamente il gentilizio etrusco aveva un valore teoforico o bene augurante rispetto al mitico personaggio Tarchie, fondatore di Tarquinia e rivelatore della religione etrusca, col significato dunque di «consacrato a Tarchie».

Pertanto, a mio giudizio, sono possibili due spiegazioni parzialmente differenti: il toponimoTrieste i) può derivare dal nome del suo fondatore tarcste «Tarcestio» = «consacrato a Tarchie»; ii) può significare «centro abitato consacrato a Tarchie». Per quest’ultima ipotesi è appena il caso di ricordare che dappertutto e in tutti i tempi sono stati e sono innumerevoli i centri abitati consacrati a una divinità o, in epoca cristiana, a un santo.

L’origine etrusca del toponimo viene confermata dal suffisso -in- del suo aggettivo etnicoTergestinus «Triestino» (G. Cesare, Bell. Gall., viii 24; Plinio, Nat. Hist., iii 127), il quale si ritrova di frequente nella lingua etrusca e nelle zone già abitate dagli Etruschi: Aretinus, Perusinus, Velitrinus ecc.

Non deve apparire strano che un toponimo etrusco sia registrato nella Venezia Giulia: è noto che gli Etruschi sono arrivati nella costa nord-occidentale del mare Adriatico e vi si sono installati bene, fondando la città di Adria e conquistando quella di Spina, che diventarono molto potenti e ricche. Tanto potenti in tutto il mare Adriatico, che questo bacino del Mar Mediterraneo ha derivato il suo nome appunto dalla città di Adria.

Ebbene, Trieste e la zona circostante sono quasi di fronte ad Adria e Spina, ragion per cui è facile intravedere l’interesse che dovevano avere gli Etruschi a tenere un punto di approdo e di appoggio a Trieste in vista dei loro scambi commerciali con le popolazioni della zona.

A questo proposito si deve considerare che per tutta l’antichità, fino alla seconda metà dell’Ottocento, quando fu inventata, costruita e adoperata in larga misura la ferrovia, “viaggiare” significava “navigare”, come dimostra anche il fatto che il verbo italiano e romanzo arrivare in origine significava “attraccare”, derivando dalla espressione marinara ad ripamvenire «arrivare alla riva». Pertanto in antico andare da Adria e Spina a Trieste attraverso il mare Adriatico era assai più semplice, più veloce e più comodo che non per terra, seguendo il lungo arco dell’intero Veneto. D’altronde esistono altri tre toponimi che confermano la presenza degli Etruschi di fronte ad Adria e Spina: i toponimi del retroterra di Trieste, Carnia, Carso ed Istria.

Carnia (regione delle Alpi Orientali abitata dai Carni) deriva dal (tardo) lat. Carnia, a sua volta probabilmente dal lat. caro, carnis «carne»; gentilizi lat. Carnenus (suffisso -en-; Norme 5),Carnius (rng) da confrontare con quelli etruschi carna, carnei, carni(a). Vedi lat. Carna, dea degli organi vitali, probabilmente etrusca (dell s. v. caro).

Forse Carni significava «mangiatori di carne» oppure «crudeli come i carnefici» o infine «adoratori della dea Carna» (lisne 182; detr 92; dicle 57). Vedi appellativo carne.

Carso (contrada calcarea delle Alpi Orientali e pure di quelle Liguri) (dti), aggettivo Cársico, è da confrontare con l’appellativo etr. carsi (Liber x 31) significato compatibile col contesto «a/in pietra, marmo» (in dativo) e con la base mediterranea *karsa «roccia» (aei 68, 484). Gentilizi lat.Carsius, Carsedius, Carsenus, Carsicius, Carsidius, Carso,-onis (rng) da confrontare con quelli etr. carśe, karse, carsna, carsui, karsiu, karsu (suffissi -ic-, -en-, -on-/-ũ; Norme 5, 7) (detr 93, 230; dicle 58).

Istria (regione) deriva dal lat. Histria, che trova esatto riscontro nell’appellativo etrusco-latinohistrio,-onis, (h)ister «danzatore, pantomimo, attore», glossa latino-etrusca (thle¹ 416; tetc 82, 83; detr 201; dicle 95).

La connessione fonetica è perfetta, mentre quella semantica è piuttosto dubbia. Io prospetto l’ipotesi che Istria in origine significasse «terra degli attori», però col significato di «gladiatori». Le lotte dei gladiatori sono state inventate dagli Etruschi ed essi erano soliti ingaggiarli da ogni dove, ad esempio fra i Campani e i Sanniti. ***

***Estratto dall’opera di Massimo Pittau, Lessico italiano di origine etrusca – 407 appellativi 207 toponimi (Roma 2012; Libreria Koinè, Sassari). (In quest’opera di trova la  spiegazione delle sigle della bibliografia).

Colori antichi

Gods In Color: Painted Sculpture Of Classical Antiquity

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A recent (2008) touring exhibition is turning a long held common belief on its head. The common perception is that the great statues and buildings of ancient Greece and Rome were all pure unpainted stone or green tarnished bronze, but researchers have been arguing that this may not been what these classic monuments really looked like back in the era of their creation. That, in fact, these statue's were quite alive and vibrant, full of color.

Photo from Stiftung Archaeologie

Researchers believe, particalurly Vinzenz Brinkmann who has been doing this research for the past 25 years, that artists used mineral and organic based colors and after centuries of deterioration any trace of pigment leftover when discovered, would have been taken off during any cleaning processes done before being put on display, washing the historical art clear of its true colors.
The findings of this research completley changes the commonly held modern ideas of the ancient world, and the way we view modern sculpture and art today, much of which was based on those classical Greek and Roman styles.

Photo from Stiftung Archaeologie
The exhibition, 'Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity' featured more than 20 full-size color reconstructions of Greek and Roman works, alongside 35 original statues and reliefs. In two reviews of the exhibition, which is running at Harvard University's Arthur M. Sackler Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with additional works at the Getty Villa in Malibu, California, the authors described the experience of first seeing something that was, for so long, thought to be a bare, lifeless statue, now come to life with color.

Photo from Stiftung Archaeologie

Walking through the galleries, I paused in front of a color reconstruction of a marble portrait of the Roman emperor Caligula, who ascended the throne in a.d. 37 at age 25, and ruled until his assassination four years later. I was used to seeing him in "classic white": his pupil-less eyes set against a ghostly pallor, frozen in a regal gaze. But color made me focus on different facial features, such as the mop of thick, brown hair that frames his fleshy face, which is accented by bright hazel eyes and soft rosy lips. His cheeks were shaded in areas that bring out a plumpness, revealing his youth. I felt as if the deceased despot from my dry history books was actually once young, handsome, and alive.
- archaeology.org

Photo from Stiftung Archaeologie

One of the greatest statues of Augustus, first emperor of Rome, has came down to us in marble. His carved armor and rippling robe meld into the symphony of cream on cream we all expect. At the Getty, a reconstruction of the piece, retouched with colors based on tints that still cling here and there to the original, has the great Augustus togaed in a cherry red that matches his lips. His tunic's touched with blue. What he's lost in elegance he's regained in verve.
- washingtonpost.com

Photo from Stiftung Archaeologie
With examples from literature like this: "If only I could shed my beauty and assume an uglier aspect/The way you would wipe color off a statue," a quote used by one of the authors said by Helen of Troy, in lines written by Euripides in 412 B.C., it is a wonder how it took us as long as it did to realize the colorful truth behind some of Man's oldest artistic relics.
The authors go on to talk about Brinkmann and his research.

Photo from Stiftung Archaeologie

And even after extensive visual and scientific analysis of the original sculptures, Ebbinghaus admits, scholars still don't know if the paint was applied in one or two coats, how finely the pigments were ground, or exactly which binding medium would have been used in each case--all elements that would affect the appearance of a finished piece. Generally, though, the color reconstructions in the exhibition "truly looked closer to ancient sculpture than just the plain white marble," she says.
- archaeology.org

Photo from Stiftung Archaeologie

When Brinkmann was a graduate student working on toolmarks in Greek marbles. He realized that the special lighting used to spot where a chisel had once passed could also reveal where ancient colors had been.
If you looked closely enough, with scientific equipment and rigor, many sculptures started to look like a coloring book just waiting to be painted in. Lab analysis of the microscopic grains of pigment that had survived here or there on many sculptures, along with close examination of the faded tints that had survived intact on another few, supplied the colors of the paint
- washingtonpost.com

Photo from Stiftung Archaeologie
Gods in Color was a traveling exhibition, previously shown throughout Europe: a great event. 


Sources: archaeology.org, washingtonpost.com.
Image rights: Stiftung Archaeologie

Rosso

Symbolism of the color red in antiquity

Jan Van Eyck: Il Matrimonio Arnolfini, 1434

Red is supposedly the first color percieved by Man. 
Brain-injured persons suffering from temporary color-blindness start to perceive red first,  before they are able to discern any other colors. 
Neolithic hunter peoples considered red to be the most important color endowed with life-giving powers and thus placed red ochre into graves of their deceased. This explains funds of skeletons embedded in up to 10 kg of red powdered ochre. Neolithic cave painters ascribed magic powers to the color red. The word "magic" ("Zauber" in German) translates to "taufr" in Old Norse and is related to the Anglo-Saxon "teafor" meaning "red ochre". It can be stipulated that they painted animals in red ochre or iron oxide to conjure their fertility.
Protective powers of the color red against evil influence were common belief. Objects, animals and trees were covered in red paint, warriors painted their axes and spear-catapults red to endow the weapons with magic powers. Some of the Australian aborigines abide by this custom up to the present times. Neolithic hunters and germanic warriors used to paint their weapons and even themselves in blood of slain animals. Roman gladiators drank blood of their dying adversaries to take over their strength. In other cultures, the newly born were bathed in blood of particularly strong and good looking animals.Red painted amulettes or red gems, such as ruby or garnet, were used as charms against the "evil eye". Wearing a red ruby was supposed to bring about invincibility. Red bed-clothes were customary in Germany up to the Middle Ages as protection against the "red illnesses", such as fever, rashes or even miscarriages (famous example is the painting Arnolfini Wedding by Jan Van Eyck, dated 1434).

Phoenix unifies the destructive symbol of fire associated with war and hate with its rebirth and its life-giving powers. Phoenix surrenders to fire and steps out of it cleansed and endowed with a new life.

Red garlands and red scarfs were part of wedding customs in many cultures. Red wedding gown was en vogue in Nurnberg of the 18th century, but this tradition goes back to roman times: Roman brides were wrapped in a fiery red veil, the flammeum, which should warrant love and fertility. Greek, Albanian and Armenian brides wear red veils even today. Chinese brides are wearing red wedding gowns and are carried to the ceremony in a red litter. The bride walks on a red carpet and is greeted by the groom who lifts her red veil. Neighbours bring red eggs to the couple after a child is born.
Red rose is the symbol of love and fidelity. According to the Greek legend red roses arised from blood of Adonis who was killed by a wild boar on a hunt. In Greek mythology red rose was a symbol for the cycle of growth and decay, but also for love and affinity. Red rose is dedicated to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and daughter of Zeus and also to Roman goddess Venus. In Christianity the red rose is associated with the Cross and the bloodshed.

There are also negative connotations of this color. Israelites in biblical times painted their doorframes in red blood to scare demons. Red in ancient Egypt was the color of the desert and of the destructive god Seth who inpersonated the Evil. "Making red" was synonymous with killing someone, evil doings were refered to as "red affairs". Salvation from Evil is the subject of an ancient Egyptian charm: "Oh, Isis, deliver me from the hands of all bad, evil, red things!" Writers of Egyptian papyri used a special red ink for nasty words.
Good and bad qualities are combined in Phoenix, the firebird. In Egypt, China and Central America it was associated with cleansing and revival. In China its name was the "Vermilion Bird" or the Substance of Fire" and promised luck and longevity.       

Clima e (scomparsa di) Civiltà.

Il declino delle grandi città della Civiltà dell'Indo, 4100 anni fa circa,  fu determinato da un indebolimento del Monsoni estivi (oggi scientificamente provato: vedi articolo in Inglese), che portò un periodo di siccità della lunghezza di almeno 200 anni. L'articolo dell'Università di Cambridge è riportato sulla rivista Geology del 25 Febbraio. Se ce ne fosse mai stato bisogno ecco un altro studio scientifico che dimostra come sia stato il clima - non episodi bellici - a spazzare via città anche grandi, quali erano quelle dell'Indo (superavano gli 80 ettari!) e a fare scomparire i loro floridissimi commerci con il Medio Oriente, impedendo che la loro protoscrittura si trasformasse in scrittura.

Decline of Bronze Age 'megacities' linked to climate change

 Climate change may have contributed to the decline of a city-dwelling civilization in Pakistan and India 4,100 years ago, according to new research.

Excavated ruins of Mohenjo-daro [Credit: The Story of India] 

Scientists from the University of Cambridge have demonstrated that an abrupt weakening of the summer monsoon affected northwest India 4,100 years ago. The resulting drought coincided with the beginning of the decline of the metropolis-building Indus Civilisation, which spanned present-day Pakistan and India, suggesting that climate change could be why many of the major cities of the civilisation were abandoned. The research, reported online on 25 February, 2014, in the journal Geology, involved the collection of snail shells preserved in the sediments of an ancient lake bed. By analysing the oxygen isotopes in the shells, the scientists were able to tell how much rain fell in the lake where the snails lived thousands of years ago. The results shed light on a mystery surrounding why the major cities of the Indus Civilisation (also known as the Harappan Civilisation, after Harappa, one of the five cities) were abandoned. Climate change had been suggested as a possible reason for this transformation before but, until now, there has been no direct evidence for climate change in the region where Indus settlements were located. Moreover, the finding now links the decline of the Indus cities to a documented global scale climate event and its impact on the Old Kingdom in Egypt, the Early Bronze Age civilisations of Greece and Crete, and the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, whose decline has previously been linked to abrupt climate change. "We think that we now have a really strong indication that a major climate event occurred in the area where a large number of Indus settlements were situated," said Professor David Hodell, from Cambridge's Department of Earth Sciences. "Taken together with other evidence from Meghalaya in northeast India, Oman and the Arabian Sea, our results provide strong evidence for a widespread weakening of the Indian summer monsoon across large parts of India 4,100 years ago." Hodell together with University of Cambridge archaeologist Dr Cameron Petrie and Gates scholar Dr Yama Dixit collected Melanoides tuberculata snail shells from the sediments of the ancient lake Kotla Dahar in Haryana, India. "As today, the major source of water into the lake throughout the Holocene is likely to have been the summer monsoon," said Dixit. "But we have observed that there was an abrupt change, when the amount of evaporation from the lake exceeded the rainfall – indicative of a drought." At this time large parts of modern Pakistan and much of western India was home to South Asia's great Bronze Age urban society. As Petrie explained: "The major cities of the Indus civilisation flourished in the mid-late 3rd and early 2nd millennium BC. Large proportions of the population lived in villages, but many people also lived in 'megacities' that were 80 hectares or more in size – roughly the size of 100 football pitches. They engaged in elaborate crafts, extensive local trade and long-ranging trade with regions as far away as the modern-day Middle East. But, by the mid 2nd millennium BC, all of the great urban centres had dramatically reduced in size or been abandoned." Many possible causes have been suggested, including the claim that major glacier-fed rivers changed their course, dramatically affecting the water supply and the reliant agriculture. It has also been suggested that an increasing population level caused problems, there was invasion and conflict, or that climate change caused a drought that large cities could not withstand long-term. "We know that there was a clear shift away from large populations living in megacities," said Petrie. "But precisely what happened to the Indus Civilisation has remained a mystery. It is unlikely that there was a single cause, but a climate change event would have induced a whole host of knock-on effects. "We have lacked well-dated local climate data, as well as dates for when perennial water flowed and stopped in a number of now abandoned river channels, and an understanding of the spatial and temporal relationships between settlements and their environmental contexts. A lot of the archaeological debate has really been well-argued speculation." The new data, collected with funding from the Natural Environment Research Council, show a decreased summer monsoon rainfall at the same time that archaeological records and radiocarbon dates suggest the beginning of the Indus de-urbanisation. From 6,500 to 5,800 years ago, a deep fresh-water lake existed at Kotla Dahar. The deep lake transformed to a shallow lake after 5,800 years ago, indicating a weakening of the Indian summer monsoon. But an abrupt monsoon weakening occurred 4,100 years ago for 200 years and the lake became ephemeral after this time. Until now, the suggestion that climate change might have had an impact on the Indus Civilisation was based on data showing a lessening of the monsoon in Oman and the Arabian Sea, which are both located at a considerable distance from Indus Civilisation settlements and at least partly affected by different weather systems. Hodell and Dixit used isotope geochemical analysis of shells as a proxy for tracing the climate history of the region. Oxygen exists in two forms – the lighter 16O and a heavier 18O variant. When water evaporates from a closed lake (one that is fed by rainfall and rivers but has no outflow), molecules containing the lighter isotope evaporate at a faster rate than those containing the heavier isotopes; at times of drought, when the evaporation exceeds rainfall, there is a net increase in the ratio of 18O to 16O of the water. Organisms living in the lake record this ratio when they incorporate oxygen into the calcium carbonate (CaCO3) of their shells, and can therefore be used, in conjunction with radiocarbon dating, to reconstruct the climate of the region thousands of years ago. Speculating on the effect lessening rainfall would have had on the Indus Civilisation, Petrie said: "Archaeological records suggest they were masters of many trades. They used elaborate techniques to produce a range of extremely impressive craft products using materials like steatite, carnelian and gold, and this material was widely distributed within South Asia, but also internationally. Each city had substantial fortification walls, civic amenities, craft workshops and possibly also palaces. Houses were arranged on wide main streets and narrow alleyways, and many had their own wells and drainage systems. 
Water was clearly an integral part of urban planning, and was also essential for supporting the agricultural base. At around the time we see the evidence for climatic change, archaeologists have found evidence of previously maintained streets start to fill with rubbish, over time there is a reduced sophistication in the crafts they used, the script that had been used for several centuries disappears and there were changes in the location of settlements, suggesting some degree of demographic shift." "We estimate that the climate event lasted about 200 years before recovering to the previous conditions, which we still see today, and we believe that the civilisation somehow had to cope with this prolonged period of drought," said Hodell. The new research is part of a wider joint project led by the University of Cambridge and Banaras Hindu University in India, which has been funded by the British Council UK-India Education and Research Initiative to investigate the archaeology, river systems and climate of north-west India using a combination of archaeology and geoscience. The multidisciplinary project hopes to provide new understanding of the relationships between humans and their environment, and also involves researchers at Imperial College London, the University of Oxford, the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and the Uttar Pradesh State Archaeology Department. "It is essential to understand the link between human settlement, water resources and landscape in antiquity, and this research is an important step in that direction," explained Petrie. "We hope that this will hold lessons for us as we seek to find means of dealing with climate change in our own and future generations." 

Source: University of Cambridge [February 26, 2014]

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Climate caused the Late Bronze Age collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean

PLoS ONE 8(8): e71004. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0071004

Environmental Roots of the Late Bronze Age Crisis 

David Kaniewski et al.

The Late Bronze Age world of the Eastern Mediterranean, a rich linkage of Aegean, Egyptian, Syro-Palestinian, and Hittite civilizations, collapsed famously 3200 years ago and has remained one of the mysteries of the ancient world since the event’s retrieval began in the late 19th century AD/CE. Iconic Egyptian bas-reliefs and graphic hieroglyphic and cuneiform texts portray the proximate cause of the collapse as the invasions of the “Peoples-of-the-Sea” at the Nile Delta, the Turkish coast, and down into the heartlands of Syria and Palestine where armies clashed, famine-ravaged cities abandoned, and countrysides depopulated. Here we report palaeoclimate data from Cyprus for the Late Bronze Age crisis, alongside a radiocarbon-based chronology integrating both archaeological and palaeoclimate proxies, which reveal the effects of abrupt climate change-driven famine and causal linkage with the Sea People invasions in Cyprus and Syria. The statistical analysis of proximate and ultimate features of the sequential collapse reveals the relationships of climate-driven famine, sea-borne-invasion, region-wide warfare, and politico-economic collapse, in whose wake new societies and new ideologies were created. 

Mummia Incaica di donna

Un forte trauma cranico contusivo - su una mummia recante segni di malattia di Chagas (una parassitosi tropicale)  - suggerisce l'omicidio come causa di morte, non diversamente dai riscontri su altre mummie  sud americane. La mummia (ospitata da circa un secolo nella collezione di in un museo archeologico bavarese) è stata studiata con metodiche forensi della moderna medicina legale. Essa risale al 1450/1640 dopo Cristo. Il grave trauma cranio facciale che la mummia presenta potrebbe proprio essere quello che ha ucciso la giovane donna, all'età di circa 20/25 anni. La giovane donna aveva le trecce legate con fibre di lama o di alpaca: l'esame dei capelli svela che la sua dieta era  a base di frutti di mare e di mais, per cui si ritiene vivesse sulla costa (Cile o Perù). La parassitosi intestinale era probabilmente presente dell'età infantile.

Impact on Incan mummy skull suggests murder



 Blunt force trauma to the skull of a mummy with signs of Chagas disease may support homicide as cause of death, which is similar to previously described South American mummies, according to a study published February 26, 2014 in PLOS ONE by Stephanie Panzer from Trauma Center Murau, Germany, and colleagues, a study that has been directed by the paleopathologist Andreas Nerlich from Munich University. 

This is a frontal view of the mummy which reveals typical squatting position (although  the legs are broken off below both knees) 

[Credit: Andreas Nerlich] 

For over a hundred years, the unidentified mummy has been housed in the Bavarian State Archeological Collection in Germany. To better understand its origin and life history, scientists examined the skeleton, organs, and ancient DNA using a myriad of techniques: anthropological investigation, a complete body CT scan, isotope analysis, tissue histology, molecular identification of ancient parasitic DNA, and forensic injury reconstruction. 

External appearance of the hair plaits which are fixed at their ends by tiny ropes of foreign material. 

[Credit: Andreas Nerlich] 

Radiocarbon dated to around 1450 -- 1640 AD, skeletal examination indicated that the mummy was likely 20-25 years old at the time of her death, and her skull exhibits typical Incan-type skull formations. Fiber from her hair bands appear to originate from South American llama or alpaca. Isotope analysis of nitrogen and carbon in her hair reveal a diet likely comprising maize and seafood, which, along with other evidence suggest South American origin and a life spent in coastal Peru or Chile. Detailed view of the mummy's face. Note the transverse defect above the left eye.  Both eyes are closed and covered by skin. 

The mouth is ovally opened, the frontal teeth are missing 

[Credit: Andreas Nerlich] 

The mummy also showed significant thickening of the heart, intestines, and the rectum, features typically associated with chronic Chagas disease, a tropical parasitic infection. DNA analysis of parasites found in rectum tissue samples also support chronic Chagas disease, a condition she probably had since early infancy. The skull structure where a massive skull and face trauma occurred, suggests the trauma was acquired prior to death, and indicates massive central blunt force. The young Incan may have been victim of a ritual homicide, as has been observed in other South American mummies. 


Source: PLOS [February 26, 2014] 
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Mare colore del vino: Daltonismo? Sinestesia?

Il modo dei greci di 'vedere' i colori  ottiene un basso punteggio, nella scala di Berlin e Kay (3,5 su 7). Ma l'idea che fossero tutti daltonici è peregrina, naturalmente, anche se si è ipotizzato che Omero fosse cieco (ammesso che sia esistito e che sia stato l'unico autore delle opere attribuitegli). 

Eppure, quel 'mare colore del vino' di Omero lascia molto perplessi: il mare può essere scuro, come quasi neri sono certi vini. Può anche essere rosso, al tramonto. Ma forse l'accostamento con il vino è frutto di sinestesia: un modo particolare di 'vedere' che implica anche l'uso di altri sensi e sensazioni. Ulisse ed Achille lamentano la morte dei loro compagni, quando descrivono il mare di quel colore.

In questo caso, il mare potrebbe essere assimilato al vino per gli effetti ammaliatori ma traditori e pericolosi. Si tratterebbe - cioé - di un modo culturalmente differente d'intendere il colore: che include molte altre fini considerazioni e trascende il freddo materialismo fisico e distante di Berlin e Kay.

Were the ancient Greeks and Romans colour blind? 

 People in ancient cultures saw colour in an altogether different way from you and me. The most famously perplexing description of colour in the ancient Mediterranean world is the 'wine-dark sea' in The Iliad and The Odyssey. Have you ever looked at the sea and thought that it was the colour of claret? 

Painted wooden tablet found near Pitsa, Corinthia, c. 540-530 BC, unknown painter, National Archaeological Museum, Athens 

[Credit: WikiCommons] 

One of the first people to argue that the ancient Greeks had an under-developed colour sense was a 19th century British prime minister. As well as being a politician, William Gladstone was a classics scholar and in his spare time did a study of colour usage in early Greek literature. According to Mark Bradley, Associate Professor of Ancient History at the University of Nottingham, Gladstone observed, quite rightly, that colour operated in a very different way in antiquity from what we are used to today. 'We have a great deal of difficulty in translating Homer's colour terms into modern western languages,' he says. 
Gladstone noted that Homer actually uses very few colour terms, that black and white predominate, and that he uses the same colours to describe objects which look quite different. 'He believed that although Homer represented the origins of western literature and had very sophisticated ideas about characterisation and tragedy and plot and genre, that in fact his colour vocabulary was comparable to that of a contemporary infant of about three years old,' says Bradley.
 This established the idea that Homeric Greeks had defective colour vision and that perhaps were colour blind en masse. It's been a hotly debated scholarly topic for over a hundred years. Bradley says that one of the problems with what Gladstone and subsequent scholars did was to attempt to map ancient Greek colour terms onto how we understand colour. That is, the idea of a spectrum of abstract colours that we've inherited from Newton, where we can close our eyes and picture yellow and orange and red and blue. 'If you start to approach colour in a very different way and think of it as a different phenomenon, this really helps to understand what's going on with ancient uses of colour,' he says. According to Bradley, the Greeks viewed chroma (in Latin color) as essentially the visible outermost shell of an object. 
So a table wouldn't be brown, it was wood-coloured. 
A window would be glass-coloured. 
Hair would be hair-coloured, skin would be skin-coloured. 'They wouldn't talk in terms of the abstract colours that we are used to today.' The term 'synaesthetic' can be used to broadly describe the different kind of association that the ancient Greeks made between the five senses. 'If colours are the external manifestations of objects, then the perception of that colour can tap into other ideas such as smell, liquidity, saturation, touch, texture.' In what we would tend to think of as purely visual, the ancient Greeks brought other senses into play. 'In antiquity, in pre-modern societies, there is much more capacity for the way you describe the world to tap into several different senses simultaneously,' says Bradley. 
So what of Homer's wine-dark sea (oinops pontos)? Bradley describes this as antiquity's best-known colour problem and one that's given rise to various theories. 
One interpretation is that it describes the sea at sunset when it's a sort of fiery red. Another interpretation hold that it's an allusion to a now obsolete type of French wine called le petit bleu or le gros bleu, a blue wine, which, if it even existed in antiquity, might explain the metaphor. Bradley takes a different view. The important point for him is that Homer describes the sea as wine-dark following a tragedy. 
Odysseus mourns the death of his men after a shipwreck, when they’ve been swallowed up by the wine-dark sea. Achilles mourns the death of Patroclus looking out on the wine-dark sea. 'The idea is that the sea is dangerous, it's captivating, it's intoxicating, just like wine', he says. 'It's much more than just the colour, it's more about what the object-metaphor is encouraging us to think about'. 
Did the Romans as well as the ancient Greeks have this 'synaesthetic' way of understanding colour? An example Bradley cites that affirms this is the meaning contained in the word we simply translate as purple. 'In antiquity when something was porphura or purpura it would describe the dye which was extracted from sea-snails.' This dye was very expensive, it glistened and refracted light and was used for the garments of the rich and powerful. It also stank. 'One of the overpowering aspects of purple was it smelled really, really bad,' says Bradley. The fishy smell stayed in imperial robes and senatorial togas, and so the word purpura carries both visual and auditory meaning. 'It's an example of how actually what we would see as a straightforward visual colour purple is in fact in ancient eyes something that is inherently synaesthetic.' Contrary to Gladstone's view that the ancients having an undeveloped, infantile colour sense, this could be seen as quite sophisticated sensory perception, according to Bradley. 'In fact ancient colour was very subtle, very sophisticated, very versatile but it functioned along different parameters from how we think colour works.' 
It's an interesting example of the difficulties involved in trying to understand another culture. Bradley says that Gladstone's model was extended in the 1960s by the sociologists Berlin and Kay. 'They looked at cultures ancient and modern around the world, and counted the number of basic colours they had and therefore plotted them out in a sort of evolutionary scale.' Homeric Greece was stage 3.5 out of seven. Various African tribes were at stage one because they only had white, black and red in their vocabularies. England, Russian and Japan were right at the top of the scale. But perceptions have changed, says Bradley. 'Their approach now has been almost universally discredited, precisely because it doesn't take into account different ways of understanding colour.' 

Author: Amanda Smith | 

Source: ABC Radio National [February 19, 2014]

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