COLOR BONUS VS. COLOR MALUS В АНТИЧНАТА МЕДИЦИНСКА МИСЪЛ И ПОЕТИЧЕСКА МЕТАФОРИКА

Abstract

Ever since Hippocratic medicine the changes in the skin colour and the appearance of the patient’s face are understood as significant symptoms of certain medical conditions and diseases. The presence of numerous terms, describing an unhealthy body in terms of different colour hues, allies the ancient medical language to the metaphorical imagery and the language of poetry. Antitheses between good and bad colour, healthy and unhealthy appearing skin hue, are absorbed as physiological analogies in the vivid imagery of the roman rhetorical treatises to describe certain styles, characteristics and adornments of the rhetorical speech. Thence similar contrasts are borrowed also by the Augustan elegiac poets (like Ovid) for the purpose of enriching their poetical imagery with colour symbolism. In order to depict full-blooded characters, conflicting emotions and stressful states, poets like Catullus and Ovid frequently resort to colour images of red, yellow, or pallid faces. In the present paper I aim at exploring this indeed curious link, overlapping the ancient medical notions of good or bad colour with their similar usages in the erotically influenced language of roman elegy.