What Colour Was The Sky In Ancient Greece?

You might say it was blue - same as always but the truth is the ancient Greeks did not have a word for blue. They might have used the adjectives 'glaukos' or 'kyanos', but these are more to do with the intensity of light and dark rather than the true colour.


Turning to the famous Greek poet, Homer, he only ever mentions four colours in the Iliad or the Odyssey. These translate approximately to black, white, greenish yellow and a kind of purple/red.
When he talks of the sky being bronze he is really suggesting it was clear bright and shining like a warrior's shield. In the same way he talked of all sheep being the same colour - purple/red.


Aristotle mentioned seven shades but again he was talking more about degrees of brightness than colour.


Following the work of Darwin it was suggested that the ancient Greeks had not advanced far enough along the evolutionary chain to have retinas capable of distinguishing colour. They seem to group things in terms of qualities. A description of light green really means fresh, alive, fluid and so was used to describe blood, the human sap.

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