He burst through ranks of fighting men,
He sprang o’er heaps of dead....
But like a graven image
Black Auster kept his place,
And ever wistfully he looked
Into his master’s face.
How characteristically the element of colour enters into these admirable descriptions.
4. It is not, however, the case of the horse alone, on which an argument may be founded. Homer abounds with notices of other animals, both domesticated and wild. We have oxen, dogs, goats, hogs, and sheep. None of his stock epithets for them are drawn from colour; and we have seen that by his wine-coloured oxen, and his violet-coloured sheep, he, in all likelihood, means no more than dark or tawny. His epithets for wild animals are of the same character when they occur, and similarly depend on the scale of degrees between light and darkness, not upon colour. Once he mentions a white goose (Od. xv. 161); but it is borne on high in the talons of an eagle, and the object evidently is to create a clear visual image.
5. I would not lay overmuch stress on the fact, that Homer never refers to colour in connection with the human frame, unless as regards the hair, which is either ξανθὸς or κυάνεος: expressions which, as we shall see, are apparent exceptions, and not real ones. The olive hue of the Mediterranean latitudes makes colour a less prominent element in human beauty for a Greek climate, than it is for ours. Still its almost entire exclusion is an element in the case. One instance that I have noticed, which introduces it, adds to the general mass of testimony. When Minerva (Od. xvi. 175) restores the beauty of Ulysses, the expression is ἂψ δὲ μελαγχροιὴς γένετο. Now this certainly does not mean that his flesh became black again. It can only signify that he resumed the olive tint, which was associated with personal vigour and beauty. So that even the μέλας of Homer means dark, and is indefinite: as might indeed be shown by many other instances.
6. Lastly, it seems to deserve remark, that there is not one single epithet of Iris taken from colour. She is once, and only once, χρυσόπτερος (Il. viii. 398); but this is in virtue of her office, and has no relation to the rainbow; as, indeed, gold with Homer always belongs to light rather than to colour. All her other epithets, without exception, are taken from motion only. She is swift (ὠκέα and τάχεια), swift of foot (πόδας ὠκέα), swift as the wind (ποδήνεμος), storm-footed (ἀελλόπους[848]), but from colour she derives no part whatever of her Homeric costume. Now though the chain of traditions which identified Iris with the rainbow was broken[849], yet the traces of it were not wholly lost. For Homer treated the rainbow, physically, as a prophet of storm (Il. xvii. 548): and again, we find that she was still tempest-footed. This epithet can only be derived from her original relation to the rainbow. It is therefore highly instructive, that none of her traits of colour should have been preserved.