CULTURE

Why Ancient Romans Paid a Fortune for the Color Purple — More Than Even Silver


Pur­ple may not be one of the most pop­u­lar col­ors in the appar­el of our age, but if you want it — as cer­tain cul­tur­al fig­ures have amply demon­strat­ed — you can get as much of it as you like, even if you don’t belong to the aris­toc­ra­cy. That was­n’t the case in antiq­ui­ty, as explained by ancient-his­to­ry YouTu­ber Gar­rett Ryan in the new video from his chan­nel Told in Stone above. Back then, long before the inven­tion of syn­thet­ic dyes, human­i­ty had to get all its col­ors from nature, and some of those nat­ur­al sources were more abun­dant and acces­si­ble than oth­ers. To pro­duce splen­did “Tyr­i­an pur­ple” required the mucus of sea snails, and not just any sea snails: only three species, col­lec­tive­ly referred to as murex, would do.

This par­tic­u­lar pur­ple, as Ryan explains, “was vir­tu­al­ly immune to wash­ing and weath­er­ing,” unlike the veg­etable dyes com­mon­ly used in antiq­ui­ty, and per­haps that strength inspired the leg­end that it was dis­cov­ered by Her­cules him­self.

Though its recipe has nev­er quite been repli­cat­ed in moder­ni­ty, it seems to have required a near­ly Her­culean labor to exe­cute, with each batch of ten thou­sand snails pro­duc­ing a sin­gle gram of dye. Even ancient Roman sen­a­tors got just one pur­ple stripe each on their togas; full pur­ple was reserved for tri­umph­ing gen­er­als and emper­ors. In some ages, under emper­ors like Nero, pur­ple — at least in its most lux­u­ri­ant shades — was for­bid­den to the com­mon peo­ple.

Not that most of them could have afford­ed it any­way, in Rome or oth­er ancient civ­i­liza­tions. “In clas­si­cal Athens, a pur­ple cloak cost three minas, or 300 drach­mas, when a fam­i­ly of four could live com­fort­ably for a year on 200,” Ryan explains. “The finest pur­ple cloth was worth its weight in sil­ver, and an espe­cial­ly rich gar­ment could cost two tal­ents: 12,000 drach­mas.” Dur­ing the reign of Augus­tus, when impe­r­i­al legionar­ies earned 900 ses­ter­tii a year, “a cloak of sec­ond-rate pur­ple” might sell for 10,000. Cal­cu­lat­ing from Dio­cle­tian’s Price Edict, you could the­o­ret­i­cal­ly trade a few pounds of pur­ple silk for 75,000 pints of beer, 7,500 “suc­cu­lent sow udders,” 750 pheas­ants, “a sin­gle first-class male lion,” and 150 law­suits: the mak­ings of quite a high time in Ancient Rome.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the Ancient Greeks & Romans Made Beau­ti­ful Pur­ple Dye from Snail Glands

Behold Ancient Egypt­ian, Greek & Roman Sculp­tures in Their Orig­i­nal Col­or





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