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Grand Fromage posted:I always thought it was so weird when people would obsess about poo poo like wine-dark sea and make elaborate theories that the Greeks literally saw colors differently instead of just... it's literature and they wrote something non-literal to evoke an image. Like, you know. All literature everywhere, ever. I also assumed that those were stock phrases to fit a meter as well. Brings back
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Jun 14, 2021 19:49
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Som cool facts from the Mary Beard book off the top of my head: - Roman baths were absolutely disgusting and everyone knew that they weren't the best for health - Marriage happened after living together for one year. That's it. - There was way way way more bars in Pompeii that seems reasonable so what we think are bars were probably just shops of some-kind - Statues of gods in temples would often only have the hands and head be marble. The rest would be a rigged up wood structure covered with "real" clothes. - The entire voting population could fit in the Pompeii forum at once. It was only like 1500 dudes (out of a pop of like 30,000 or so). - One of the largest buildings was paid for by a woman (Eumachia) which would just be crazy in for example greece. edit - most people were addicted to dice games and would loudly grunt when rolling the dice from a cup. - They kept doormice in special little jars to fatten them up before eating. They found these jars. euphronius fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Jun 14, 2021 |
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Jun 14, 2021 19:49
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euphronius posted:- most people were addicted to dice games and would loudly grunt when rolling the dice from a cup. same About colours, another thing is that where one colour stops and another begins isn't an immutable thing. In russian there is a "pink" equivalent for blue, instead of saying sky blue. Stuff like that.
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Jun 14, 2021 20:06
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Silver2195 posted:The actual reason is contrast. The original point of the rule of tincture was probably to avoid putting light colors with light colors next to light colors or dark colors next to dark colors, because that would make it too hard to "read" a shield from across a battlefield. At least, that's how the Society for Creative Anachronism interprets it. As heraldry developed, the rule of tincture seems to have been elaborated into an arbitrary rule that could be circumvented with linguistic loopholes (e.g., Satan's coat of arms is technically OK if you convey that the frogs are green by calling them "proper" instead of "Vert"). What I'm getting at is why does Or offer a superior contrast to Sable?
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Jun 14, 2021 20:16
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Or another example is stoplights being considered blue in Japan. There's quite a few languages that don't really make a distinction between the two.
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Jun 14, 2021 20:18
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My understanding is that if you asked Japanese people whether midori (green) was a shade of ao (blue), older people will tend to say yes and younger people will tend to say no--it's a top level color word. The go light being ao is increasingly a linguistic leftover, I've read. Which is even more interesting, to me.
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Jun 14, 2021 20:22
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Grand Fromage posted:I always thought it was so weird when people would obsess about poo poo like wine-dark sea and make elaborate theories that the Greeks literally saw colors differently instead of just... it's literature and they wrote something non-literal to evoke an image. Like, you know. All literature everywhere, ever. Isn't the current understanding that this was before there were common words for color in that society so they'd need to lean more on similes and metaphors to evoke that aspect in images instead of just describing directly?
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Jun 14, 2021 20:25
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Since we're on the subject of Homer, is it generally accepted in academia that he existed and wrote both the Illiad and the Odyssey? Or is it more like some Biblical texts where we assume that they weren't actually written by the people they're credited to?
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Jun 14, 2021 20:31
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Well he definitely didn't write them
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Jun 14, 2021 20:32
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Samuel Clemens posted:Since we're on the subject of Homer, is it generally accepted in academia that he existed and wrote both the Illiad and the Odyssey? Or is it more like some Biblical texts where we assume that they weren't actually written by the people they're credited to? They're attributed to Homer, presumably because he was an awesome epic poet who could keep an audience rapt for hours with his performances. He probably was a real person. However, he was also described as blind, so the written versions definitely didn't come from him. Somebody (or perhaps multiple people) wrote them from memory of his performances, perhaps many decades later. There are differences in language between the Iliad and the Odyssey, so the actual writing was likely done by two different people. Bottom line is that no one really knows.
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Jun 14, 2021 20:41
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The written version is probably an edited compilation of the best bits of various oral performances from different artists
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Jun 14, 2021 20:44
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:About colours, another thing is that where one colour stops and another begins isn't an immutable thing. In russian there is a "pink" equivalent for blue, instead of saying sky blue. Stuff like that.
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Jun 14, 2021 20:54
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Samuel Clemens posted:Since we're on the subject of Homer, is it generally accepted in academia that he existed and wrote both the Illiad and the Odyssey? Or is it more like some Biblical texts where we assume that they weren't actually written by the people they're credited to? They are like Biblical texts in that the texts we have are latter-day canonizations that became so significant that they almost totally obscure the earlier written and still earlier oral traditions from which they came. You probably would not find many current academics who argue that there was one guy called Homer who composed both the Iliad and the Odyssey. Throughout antiquity pretty much everyone agreed that such a guy existed, but they did not necessarily agree on the details of his life or where he was from. The strongest link between him and anything we know to be historical would be the Homerids, a group of 6th/5th century rhapsodes from Chios who may have claimed to be descended from Homer, or else to have been his students or professional successors. Some people have taken this a step further and suggested that the Homerids came up with the whole Iliad/Odyssey tradition themselves and attributed it to a mythic forebear.
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Jun 14, 2021 21:13
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The Bible is way more overtly political than the iliad too
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Jun 14, 2021 21:14
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Scarodactyl posted:This is important in gems, where in the west in recent history people decided there was a difference between ruby and mere 'pink sappire' because rubies are red and pink isn't red, though previously this distinction was not made at all. This dividing line is not well defined but nevertheless has a big influence on price. It is alsi divided very differently in eastern markets. It's dumb. When it comes to precious gemstones the answer is "because jewelers make money by doing it that way."
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Jun 14, 2021 21:15
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The history of people's understanding of gemstones is ridiculous because while in the modern day we know their chemical components and their different properties like how shiny or crystal structure or hardness, back through most of history people could usually only tell the color, and they referred to gemstones by that. And then it turns out that color is pretty ephemeral in a lot of popular minerals and a lot of popular gemstones are just various impurities captured in mostly translucent crystals. It also means that most people talking about gemstones having magical powers and citing like folklore or some wisdom of ancients are talking double bullshit because old sources don't have any goddamn idea what gemstone they're talking about. There's also weird things like how historically diamonds often would be a lot darker than other gemstones because older cuts hadn't figured out how to maximize shininess.
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Jun 14, 2021 21:16
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SlothfulCobra posted:And then it turns out that color is pretty ephemeral in a lot of popular minerals and a lot of popular gemstones are just various impurities captured in mostly translucent crystals. See, for instance, rubies and sapphires being different gemstones, even though they're the same mineral with different impurities making them red or blue.
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Jun 14, 2021 21:28
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well dosh garnet. I had no idea
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Jun 14, 2021 21:30
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Aluminum oxide is just really loving handy.
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Jun 14, 2021 21:31
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euphronius posted:The Bible is way more overtly political than the iliad too This is probably true i guess, but we know so little about the precise political context of the composition of the Iliad/Odyssey that it might just be apparent. In other words, it might be that it all seems fairly apolitical to us because we’ve all forgotten that the poems were intended to be performed at the court of some guy who claimed to be an Atreid and stole his best soldier’s sex slave one time.
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Jun 14, 2021 21:33
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They could differentiate a bit more than color (corundum and spinel were hard to separate, but they did differentiate them from garnet for instance) but an awful lot changed as we started to figure out what a mineral was. There's a fun in between period where in Europe there were "oriental" variants on gems (oriental topaz, oriental emerald etc) which fell into the same broad color range as other gems but were obviously different. These would typically be sapphires of varying colors from Sri Lanka.
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Jun 14, 2021 21:33
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cheetah7071 posted:My understanding is that if you asked Japanese people whether midori (green) was a shade of ao (blue), older people will tend to say yes and younger people will tend to say no--it's a top level color word. The go light being ao is increasingly a linguistic leftover, I've read. Which is even more interesting, to me. The distinction between blue and grey doesn't show up in old English until the AD 700's or so. Before that they're the same color.
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Jun 14, 2021 21:40
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Hot drat, for years I thought rubies were made from iron oxide. Looking this up it turns out nope, I was wrong. Blutstein is iron oxide. Huh. Something new is learned every day, I guess. Though now I kind of like to know how it came to be that Blutstein (Hematite) and Bloodstone (Heliotrope) are two total different minerals. German and English geologists talking to each other must have a hell of a time. 
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Jun 14, 2021 21:40
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Although aluminum cans are made of an alloy, aluminum itself gets its hardness because of oxidation. Elemental aluminum is very weak and isn't good for a lot of the things we think of for aluminum. Your beercan is rigid and durable in part because it's basically a thin ruby in can shape.
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Jun 14, 2021 21:43
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SlothfulCobra posted:The history of people's understanding of gemstones is ridiculous because while in the modern day we know their chemical components and their different properties like how shiny or crystal structure or hardness, back through most of history people could usually only tell the color, and they referred to gemstones by that. And then it turns out that color is pretty ephemeral in a lot of popular minerals and a lot of popular gemstones are just various impurities captured in mostly translucent crystals. It also means that most people talking about gemstones having magical powers and citing like folklore or some wisdom of ancients are talking double bullshit because old sources don't have any goddamn idea what gemstone they're talking about. Right. The Latin word "smaragdus," for example, referred to any green gem, not just what we would call an emerald today.
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Jun 14, 2021 21:51
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skasion posted:This is probably true i guess, but we know so little about the precise political context of the composition of the Iliad/Odyssey that it might just be apparent. In other words, it might be that it all seems fairly apolitical to us because we’ve all forgotten that the poems were intended to be performed at the court of some guy who claimed to be an Atreid and stole his best soldier’s sex slave one time. We also only have these two (big) slivers of the various works surrounding the Trojan War, while contemporary audiences would've been familiar with a lot of other major compositions we know existed. Part of why the Iliad can be so intensely personal is that there was no need to bother explaining all that poo poo about the contest between the goddesses and Paris stealing Helen and etc etc etc, everyone knew them and bards would recite those stories separately
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Jun 14, 2021 21:59
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Aluminum oxide is only a ruby if it's red. Otherwise, any other color counts as a sapphire. Coke cans are rubies, pepsi and root beer cans are sapphires. Historically, most blue shiny gemstones were labeled sapphires, and a lot of references to sapphires would sometimes mention gold flecks, indicating that it was actually the other famously blue gemstone, lapis lazuli (which as the bluest rock out there was also used to make ultramarine pigment). But for whatever reason after the chemical components were determined, it was decided that it's more important that rubies be red than sapphires be blue, so any red corundum is a ruby, any other color of corundum is a sapphire.
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Jun 14, 2021 22:03
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Libluini posted:Though now I kind of like to know how it came to be that Blutstein (Hematite) and Bloodstone (Heliotrope) are two total different minerals.
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Jun 14, 2021 22:04
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The literal translation of Homer is "wine eyed" or "wine faced" so it's entirely unclear it refers to colour anyway.
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Jun 14, 2021 22:17
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Weka posted:"wine faced" 
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Jun 14, 2021 22:30
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Mr. Nice! posted:Although aluminum cans are made of an alloy, aluminum itself gets its hardness because of oxidation. Elemental aluminum is very weak and isn't good for a lot of the things we think of for aluminum. Your beercan is rigid and durable in part because it's basically a thin ruby in can shape. mostly tho because its pressurized from the inside, load bearing beer
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Jun 14, 2021 22:39
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Tunicate posted:The sole surviving relic of 1900s art in color: a single copy of jojo's bizarre adventure. even if they restricted themselves to very prosaic texts the phrase "a white person with red hair" could give them some pretty wild ideas about how we understand colours
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Jun 14, 2021 23:12
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euphronius posted:One good part of the Mary Beard book is the debate over the number of brothels in Pompeii. The ranges are from one to 34. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill is a hack who thinks every building with anything half erotic is a brothel. Most weren't.
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Jun 15, 2021 04:18
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King of False Promises posted:Andrew Wallace-Hadrill is a hack who thinks every building with anything half erotic is a brothel. Most weren't. I just visited last September and saw at least one villa with the funniest paintings that just had to be a brothel. “Private bathouse” it was labeled though.
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Jun 15, 2021 06:42
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Crab Dad posted:I just visited last September and saw at least one villa with the funniest paintings that just had to be a brothel. “Private bathouse” it was labeled though. I’m not sure that even qualifies as an euphemism.
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Jun 15, 2021 08:26
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The distinction between blue and grey doesn't show up in old English until the AD 700's or so. Before that they're the same color. Huh. I was just reading that the word "blue" comes from the word for woad dye. My experience of dyeing with indigo (same dye compound as woad) is that lighter shades look more grey then blue. So conflating the two kinda makes sense.
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Jun 15, 2021 08:46
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What's your source on that? Etymonline suggests it come from "PIE *bhle-was "light-colored, blue, blond, yellow," " https://www.etymonline.com/word/blue
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Jun 15, 2021 09:59
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euphronius posted:- There was way way way more bars in Pompeii that seems reasonable so what we think are bars were probably just shops of some-kind. Or they were all drunks. Silver2195 posted:Right. The Latin word "smaragdus," for example, referred to any green gem, not just what we would call an emerald today. And that makes me wonder if the Chaos Emeralds infamously being all kinds of colours has something to do with that. Brawnfire posted:well dosh garnet. I had no idea I would not be surprised if that was part of the joke, given how much Steven Universe makes use of both the scientific and folklore/mythical associations with precious stones.
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Jun 15, 2021 10:54
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euphronius posted:- There was way way way more bars in Pompeii that seems reasonable so what we think are bars were probably just shops of some-kind I think I heard in some doc, perhaps a Mary Beard one, that most people didn't cook at home so there must have been many takeaways.
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Jun 15, 2021 11:09
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Lol at the 0 brothels in Pompeii hypothesis. Yeah that corridor connecting like 6 small bedrooms right there, with the roman kamasutra painted above the doors? That's... a bakery. Yes.
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Jun 15, 2021 11:25
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