The Gospel of Hellas - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

the hellenic consciousness
occupied a post at the court of Pilate. In a quarrel in a neighbor’s apple orchard
Judas killed his father, who was the owner of the orchard, and married his wife.
Finally Ciborea, the mother of Judas, whom he married, revealed her dream;
they both discovered the fateful crimes. In repentance Judas followed Christ,
betrayed him and ended his own life. Steiner used to refer to this apocryphal
story of Judas Iscariot in connection with the Oedipus legend, for these two
stories carry the same imaginations of the change of the tribal consciousness
and indicate that the same drama of the soul took place as with other peoples.
The Oedipus saga is, indeed, the Hellenic way of pointing to the riddles of
the consciousness of the Greek psyche. Its right understanding is essential for
the conception of the gospel of Hellas.
3. THE COLOR PERCEPTION OF THE ANCIENT HELLENES
The study of the color perception of the ancient Greeks is indispensable for
a further proof of the change of consciousness. The sense-organs in a child are
already fully perfected as far as their physiological functions are concerned, yet
every growing infant has gradually to grasp the relationship of distance in space
and the shades of colors. Our percepts grow and change with our concepts.
Modern physiologists, psychologists and philologists have made important
investigations concerning the color perceptions of the ancient Hellenes which
offer us definite evidence that their faculties for perceiving color differed from
our own. Through this evidence we are able to arrive at further conclusions
about the change in the character of the Hellenic consciousness.
According to Greek writers the Hellenes did not perceive all the seven
colors of the spectrum. All classical Roman authors agree that they recognized
but four. W.E. Gladstone in his Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age pioneered
an investigation of the color perceptions of the Greeks. 28 Many other studies
have been added to Gladstone’s investigations, and a remarkably thorough
work by W. Schultz, dealing with the color-system of the ancient Hellenes,
concludes the investigation most convincingly. 29
Gladstone determined that the Greeks had only the following definite
terms for colors besides white (leukos) and black (melas): yellow (xanthos),
red (erythros), purple (porphyrios) and indigo (kyaneos). He submitted two