The Ritual Significance Of Yellow Among The Romans

Author : Francis Marion Dana
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781330556771
Total Pages : 44 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (567 download)

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Download or read book The Ritual Significance of Yellow Among the Romans (Classic Reprint) written by Francis Marion Dana and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-02 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Ritual Significance of Yellow Among the Romans The conventional significance of color occupies an important and little-understood position in the human thought of all ages, but it is only within recent years that any detailed study has been made of individual colors as being religiously symbolic. Among the ancient Romans, religion was almost entirely a matter of convention, and we should therefore expect to find that their religious rites were, in a large degree, fettered by a formalism which tended to produce an intricate system of symbolism. Such being the case, it has been for centuries the task of scholars to attempt to discover the meaning of certain religious rites, a meaning which the Romans themselves were far from understanding. In all these researches, however, there is but little mention of the significance of color, and it is the aim of this study to examine a part of this phase of Roman religion. A recent study by Dr. M. E. Armstrong, of Goucher College, has accounted most satisfactorily for the use of scarlet, purple, black and white, and gold in Roman ritual, but no study has been made of the use of yellow, which is important particularly in the marriage ceremony. Of what natural phenomena was yellow the visible sign or representation, and what was the underlying idea which the Romans wished to express by its use? These are the questions which must be confronted in an investigation of this kind. In this connection the words found to be of the greatest importance are luteus and croceus. First of all, therefore, we have tried to collect, as nearly as possible, all the passages in which they occur, in order to decide the difference, if any, in their color denotation. Though it has been impossible to make separate mention of all the references collected for this purpose, those have been quoted which seem to bear especially upon the final decision. A brief study of the word flavus revealed the fact that, with perhaps one exception, it has apparently no symbolical significance; therefore references to its use are few, and the discussion is confined for the most part to passages in which luteus or croceus occurs. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.