The Gospel of Hellas - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

course, in the same way that he mentioned the wine-red ocean when he wanted
to describe the blue water of the Aegean sea.
The ancient Hellenes perceived all colors towards the active part of the
spectrum, the part of the so-called warm colors. They saw various shades of
red and orange, yellow as either white or greenish, and blue as either black or
purple, wine-red.
A survey of the various terms used by the Greek and Roman authors
for the colors of the rainbow might give a picture of the complicated and
undetermined perception of yellow and blue and of the different words for the
three main colors red, green and violet (purple) of which the perception of the
rainbow consisted.
Aristotle phoinikoun prasinon halourgon
Xenophon phoinikoun chloron poryphyroun
Seneca igneum luteum viride caeruleum-purpureum
red (yellow)-green (blue)-violet
Modern psychologists have pointed out frequently that color tests on
young children have shown that perception begins with red and ends with blue,
that therefore the warm or active colors which the Greeks perceived almost
exclusively are also the first perceptions in the growing child.
The loss of all paintings and murals of ancient Greece prevents us from
drawing ultimate conclusions about the color perceptions of the Hellenes. Yet
in pottery, which is preserved to us, we see the colors remaining in red and
black in spite of the increasing mastery of form.
Red-black is the first stage of color perception according to Gladstone’s
hypothesis. The second is red-yellow (with their orange shades). The third stage
is the perception of green, while only the last signifies acquaintance with blue.
4. THE POLIS
the hellenic consciousness
The difference in the consciousness of the Hellenes from that of later times
can be observed from a sociological standpoint in interpreting the city-state
which they called polis. The word polis cannot be accurately translated into any