The nature of that other occasion is yet more strange. Hector’s corpse is anointed, in Il. xxiii. 186, with rosy oil, ῥοδόεντι ἐλαίῳ. It does not appear allowable to follow Damm in rendering this as oil made from roses: for we have no such thing as ἔλαιον in Homer, except from the olive-tree. It therefore applies to the hue of olive oil: and no conceivable use of an epithet could be more conclusive to show an extreme vagueness in the Poet’s ideas of colour, as well as probably in those of his age.
10. The violet, no less than the rose, has supplied Homer with epithets, which he has used in such a manner as to deprive them of all specific force as vehicles for the expression of a peculiar colour.
There is certainly a great temptation, when we find in Homer the ἰοειδέα πόντον, to give him credit for the full meaning of this very beautiful epithet, which he uses thrice for the sea (Il. ix. 298, Od. v. 55, xi. 106), and never in any other connection. But when we examine his employment of cognate words, it is obvious that he can mean little more by the epithet, than to convey a rather vague idea of darkness.
For he uses ἰόεις as an epithet for iron (Il. xxiii. 850): and ἰοδνεφὴς, first for the wool (Od. iv. 135) with which Helen is spinning. Here we might be tempted to presume a purple dye. Yet it would be a somewhat strained supposition: for what title have we to say that dyeing was in use among the Greeks of the Homeric age? Do we hear of any dye except that of the φοίνιξ, a name which tends to indicate a foreign character? And does not the introduction of the Mæonian or Carian woman in the simile of Il. iv. 141, to stain the ivory—a most simple example of the art, or scarcely an example at all—afford a strong presumption, that the art was foreign to Greece? Such is apparently the true inference: but, if it be the true one, then we at once lose the specific force of purple for all the mantles, carpets, and the like, in the poems; and we are only entitled to presume them to have been woven of a dark wool.
This construction is supported by the second and only other passage, in which Homer has used the word ἰοδνεφής. For here (Od. ix. 426) he speaks of the living sheep of Polyphemus as
καλοί τε μεγάλοι τε, ἰοδνεφὲς εἶρος ἔχοντες.
This passage appears evidently to apply to what we term black sheep, which are more strictly of a dark brown. So viewed, it affords another most striking token of the indeterminateness of Homeric colours, that the name of the violet can be employed with such a signification. And it also seems to carry forward the proof that the πορφύρεαι χλαῖναι, the ῥήγεα, and all other woven objects with that epithet annexed, were in reality either black or brown.
11. Homer employs the word οἴνοψ with evident relation to colour; but it is for two objects only, viz.
a. For oxen, in Il. xiii. 703, and Od. xiii. 32.