(no subject)

[anotherusedpage]

Mostly for the attention of sea_bright and thalassius:

kitmarlowe posted earlier (or possibly yesterday) about the colours of the Four Horses of the Apocolypse. http://kitmarlowe.livejournal.com/81661.html?nc=10

Anyone know the original well enough to know what colour that fourth, 'pale' horse was supposed to be? It's been intriguing me for a while...

Will probably post fic later.

Comments

[thalassius.livejournal.com]

My RSV just says 'pale'. On the other hand, the second horse is described as 'bright red', rather than just red, implying that a specific colour-word might have been used in the original.

A thought that occurs to me: the Greek root chlorus (Romanized: I don't know how to enter Greek in html, and we don't have a Greek dictionary here right now!), from which we get the word 'chlorine', can mean both 'pale green' (hence chlorine) and simply 'pale' (e.g. Constantius I Chlorus). If this was the word used for the horse in the original Greek, it might explain the ambiguity.

[sea-bright.livejournal.com]

While I've got the lexicon out...

The word used to describe the second horse is purros. My lexicon gives both 'red' and 'fiery red' as meanings for this. The word is fairly obviously cognate with pur or puros, meaning fire - the root from which we get 'pyre' and the prefix 'pyro' (for some reason, upsilons quite often turn into Ys in English). But I haven't managed to discover any other Greek words for red, and this, coupled with the discussion of chloros below, leads me to the conclusion that New Testament era Greek simply did not have enough colour words.

[midnightmelody.livejournal.com]

That's most depressing. You need at least six words just to deal with blue in any reasonable depth. :)

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

A planty horse and a firey horse. I get the feeling that the other two ought to be watery and airy.

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

The concept of not having enough colour words also very interesting.

[kitmarlowe.livejournal.com]

In Old Norse, they use the same word for blue and black. I find it very weird.

[ex-leighwoos982.livejournal.com]

Cat! Cat with a book!
*dies of love*

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

Thankyou! That would explain it.

[sea-bright.livejournal.com]

Pale is the traditional translation, but the Greek is chloros, which in other contexts definitely means green - it's one of the root words of, for example, chlorophyll, the pigment that makes plants green. I assume there's some justification for the traditional translation (other than people thinking 'Well, it's a horse, so it can't possibly really be green', that is) so I've always pictured it as the sort of pale, slightly luminescent green that people get painted on stage to indicate that they're ghosts - Leichner's make-up range features a colour called Blithe Spirit for this very purpose, if you've ever seen it. Of course, it's also a common idiom to say people who are ill look green (my dictionary includes a reference to a condition called 'chlorosis', which is a severe form of anaemia which gives you a greenish complexion - presumably at least partly as a result of making you very pale) - I don't know enough about 1st century Greek idiom to be sure, but it seems reasonable to assume that the association between paleness and/or greenishness and illness and/or death (or in this case, Death :-) ) is one that goes way back.

[sea-bright.livejournal.com]

So, pooling my knowledge and thalassius's, it looks as though chloros can mean anything from pale through pale green to a proper planty green. Which strikes me as a slightly odd way of dividing up colours, but there you go.

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

a glowing green ghostly horse...
well, I suppose it's no more surreal than most of the rest of John the Divine's stuff.

I do love revelations.

[kitmarlowe.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much for posting all this - it's fascinating. :)

[sea-bright.livejournal.com]

Always happy to ramble about vaguely theological stuff :-)

[mi-guida.livejournal.com]

On the note of colour ranges, there was a particular one in Catullus 64, which I can't remember offhand, but which was anywhere from dark red to purple-blue, and came from crushing one particular shell. As has been said - insufficiency of colour words in classical languages.