K.’s book adds to the field of a fascinating and challenging topic, repeatedly addressed in recent years by studies from several perspectives, but far from being fully explored. The study, a revised version of a doctoral dissertation, is intended to fill a gap; drawing on work devoted to the significance of colours in Latin poetry, it addresses the theme in the context of the Latin novel. K. starts from a lexicographical approach, with the intention of quantifying the presence and distribution of colour terms and then classifying the functions they perform in the two great Latin novels, Satyrica and Metamorphoses, and in the Latin translation of the pseudo-Clementine novel Recognitiones.
Opening with a selective overview of the state of research, K. points to the works that provided the methodological basis for her research: mainly J. André’s study (Les termes de couleur dans la langue latine [1949]) on colour terms and J. Clarke’s (Imagery of Colour and Shining in Catullus, Propertius and Horace [2003]) on Catullus and Latin poetry (other important research on the topic, such as most of M. Bradley’s contributions, or specific studies on the novel are not cited). Especially from Clarke, K. seems to take some of the criteria she uses to explore her theme, such as the choice to include in her survey both proper colour designations and ‘implicit’ ones, or the idea of exploring the recurring presence of colour clusters as Kompositionsprinzip. Three sections illustrate the passages in which colour clusters occur, trying to recover the function they perform in the plot.
In Petronius’ novel K. highlights the predominance of one cluster, with varying symbolic value: if in the Cena red and yellow are mostly the colours of gold and purple – the precious materials of furnishings and decorations that strike Encolpius’ gaze and communicate a sense of estrangement from the world of the wealthy freedmen –, in the second part of the novel the same colours appear sub specie of flames and blood, to evoke scenes of violence and destruction. For K. these are key elements, which confer a sensory dimension to the narrative and convey the central themes of the two sections. A more extensive use of colours is found in Apuleius, whose rhetorical virtuosity is expressed in a great variety of formulations. The fields of colour imagery are also expanded, with a greater emphasis on bodily colours, but also on those of nature and landscape, especially of the locus amoenus. K. sees them as leitmotifs, marking themes or situations: gold/luxury, blood/violence, fire/passion, bodily colours/emotional states – with the addition of the colour of roses, reminding readers of Lucius’ longed-for and always delayed metamorphosis. Shifting to the Christian era, to Rufinus’ translation of the Recognitiones in the early 400s, K. comments on the most frequent types of imagery: the opposition of light and darkness, a metaphor for truth and ignorance, blood and fire for death and passions, gold for wealth and idolatry. Most remarkably, there are far fewer colour determinations, often figuring in negative contexts. K. sees in this ‘aesthetic abstinence’ an intentional distancing from the classical tradition, even against the development of Christian figurative language at the time; she explains it with the author’s search for authenticity and the leading ideas behind the text: the fallacy of sight and the rejection of images as idolatry.
The functions attributed to colours in each text are summarised at the end of the book, from that of visual reminders soliciting the readers’ attentiveness and participation to more specific textual and narrative ones.
The interest of the volume lies mainly in the overview offered to readers of the frequency and diversity of the colour notations in the texts, with the obvious contrast between the two major novels and the Christian one. Though coming from a different perspective, the results confirm the cultural salience of specific hues and their constant association with concrete natural referents, responsible in most cases for the value assigned to them (M. Bradley, Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome [2009]). The idea that certain colour clusters function as key themes unifying elements of the plot, although not always as compelling as K. holds, could offer a stimulating perspective on the Satyrica, with the warning that it often seems difficult to draw a clear-cut distinction between colour and object/material (e.g. aurum/aureus for ‘yellow’ in the Cena). K. is more convincing in presenting the findings on Apuleius. Chromatic notations, varied and frequent as they are, seem indeed to be a feature specific to the Metamorphoses, mainly used as a means of evidentia or of literary allusion. Less proven is the assumption that the recurrence of specific combinations of colours identifies them as tools of an underlying textual strategy.
That said, some concerns are raised by the way in which the inventory of considered colour notations is drawn. Apart from the well-known difficulties about the exact interpretation of Latin colour terms, an issue that is bypassed with a rather stiff adoption of André’s repertory (but will the olivae albae really evoke white? or the fulgentes oculi yellow?), a more substantial point regards how the notion of ‘colour’ is defined and thus lexically recorded. The inclusion of terms (along with proper colour words) that can evoke a coloured image or even hold a ‘hidden’ colour connotation seems more appropriate to poetry than to the novel, where there is a risk of overestimating the visual chromatic potential of certain passages. Furthermore, as K. admits, such a criterion relies heavily on subjectivity, making its suitability for an investigation based on quantitative data at least questionable. In fact, readers are presented with a somewhat confusing selection, while the reasons why some lexical items are or are not recognised as having a Farbbedeutung remain often unclear. One wonders why mel and lac in the Cena are recorded among colour terms, but other names of coloured food items are not, such as piper and citrea mentioned in the same clause, or why nix appears under ‘white’, but not glacies or pruina, or why Punicus (malum) is recorded but not Parius (lapis). Conversely, some words are recorded as colour notations when having a different meaning (candide/us ‘clearly/sincere’ or obrussa taken for ‘red’).
Doubts also remain about the importance attached to frequency. The prevalence of certain ‘colours’, when expressed by their concrete referents does not seem surprising, given the topical association of these referents with key themes of the novel: the shine of gold for richness, blood for violence, fire for passion or destruction, white for bodily beauty. But the mention of less usual colours seems equally significant, especially when these appear in the same narrative section: the colourful clothing of the members of Trimalchio’s familia, which strikes readers with its vivid and dissonant palette, is surely more than a sign of the bad taste of the host or the addition of a disturbing aesthetic effect to the narrative. Readers will be reminded of the function colours perform in Roman dress-code (a much-explored issue in imperial times) and of their power in fashioning/revealing identities – a crucial characteristic, deeply rooted in the specific cultural representation of colours of the ancient world, which can also be traced in the other two novels (see e.g. E. Wolff, ‘La couleur dans le Satyricon de Pétrone et les Epigrammes de Martial’, in: J. Pigeaud [ed.], La couleur, les couleurs [2007], pp. 91–102; P.F. Moretti, ‘“Seeing the truth”: Some Remarks on Color(s) and Meaning in Apuleius’ Golden Ass’, in: E. Cueva et al. [edd.], Re-Wiring the Ancient Novel II [2018], pp. 135–55). Petronius elaborates on it again in the Satyrica, when Encolpius and his friends smear their faces with atramentum (a term not recorded by K.) to simulate the tattooed letters on the forehead of slaves and discuss at length the disfiguring effect of altering one’s own appearance. More generally, one gets the impression that the quantitative approach (colour-clusters and their frequency) leads to a narrowing of focus, which does not do justice to such a multifaceted object.
Scholars interested in the significance of colour in Latin literature will find in the book primarily an inventory, reporting similarities and differences among the three novels in their use of this powerful resource.
