From: Mark Odegard
Message: 308
Date: 1999-11-21
Piotr writes:
I can't discuss Linear B semantics confidently, but in Classical Greek porphuros was in all likelihood as primary as English purple.I was talking about Homeric and Mycenaean Greek, and not Classical Greek (ca. Aeschylus and later). I assume this is what Piotr is speaking of too.I will concede that the Mycenaean power-elites might have had a larger vocabulary of primary color terms, and that once the palace-economy despots were disloged by the Dorians, such terms might have been lost (or rather, the surviving speakers never had them in the first place). It's as if hordes of Valley-Speak barbarians sacked Redmond, Washington, causing the loss of MS-Speak until recovered by archaeologists of 3.5 millennia hence. 'Purple', if a genuine color-word at the time, could have easily been a part of the professional jargon.