In both the Iliad and Odyssey, Homer described the sea as “wine-dark” a total of seventeen times. To English-speaking readers, this may come across as strange. The sea is universally blue, right? It is amicably named “the big blue.” Just thinking about the color blue evokes maritime scenes. How could such a renowned and credible writer like Homer compare the ocean—the epitome of blue—to something as red as wine? Some, like former British Prime Minister William Gladstone, attributed this to widespread colorblindness in the Ancient Greek population. Others think of it as a poetic and artistic choice with no concrete connection. In reality, this flowery epithet is likely the result of color categorization differences across languages. The Greeks could physically see English blue, but the absence of an ancient equivalent and a different cultural perspective on color caused all sorts of creative alternatives in literature. Color in the Ancient Greek world was attributed to an object’s outermost layer, meaning that “hair would be hair-coloured” instead of the blonde, brown, black, or red we see in English (Smith 10). These synaesthetic adjectives could also extend into other sensory realms like texture and smell, so the liquidity of wine may have influenced Homer to compare it to the liquidity of ocean.
Why “wine-dark” specifically, though? Some scholars advocate for the theory centered around this epithet’s ancient connotation. Made up of oînos (wine) and óps (eye, face), oînops literally means wine-faced, but is often translated as wine-like or wine-dark. Homer often described wine as melás, meaning “dark” or “black.” This word was also associated with blood, death, anger, and night, suggesting that Homer used oînops figuratively to emphasize the ocean’s dark violence at times, “rendering the tragic circumstances in the color of blood” (Hall 7). Another speculation is that the color of Homeric wine may have been physically blue. Le gros bleu, a blue French wine, does exist, but it would have probably been out of reach for the ancient world. A blue Greek wine, though, was possible. Dr. Robert E.D. Cattley, former classics professor, and chemist Robert H. Wright concluded that the water surrounding the Peloponnese would have been alkaline because of the abundant marble and limestone, meaning that the pH change of water-diluted wine could have been enough to make it appear blue.
All of these theories seem sound in evidence, but none can account for Homer’s actual perceptions. According to the Sapir-Whorf linguistic relativity hypothesis, language dramatically affects cognitive processes like perception and categorization. If this is true, then it would make sense that Homer truly saw the ocean as a dark purpley-red, since Homeric Greek had limited words for blue, and people often resorted to simple dark and light qualifiers.
Even without a palpable reason for this peculiar adjective, generations of readers can come to appreciate Homer’s poetic creativity in conveying the tempestuous and shadowy nature of the ocean. Blue or not, this wine-likeness has served its purpose in revealing these qualities.
Sources
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Photo Credit: Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, Chaos, 1841
Alexander, Caroline. “A Winelike Sea.” Lapham’s Quarterly, http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/sea/winelike-sea#:~:text=Nineteenth%2Dcentury%20British%20prime%20minister,%2Dera%20Aegean%20wine%2Dred. Accessed 14 Feb. 2024.
Hall, Christopher. “Blue Is the Rarest Color: Language and Visual Perception.” Burnaway, 30 August 2018, burnaway.org/magazine/blue-language-visual-perception/. Accessed 14 Feb. 2024.
Smith, Amanda. “Were the Ancient Greeks and Romans Colour Blind?” ABC Radio National, 14 Apr. 2014, http://www.abc.net.au/listen/radionational/archived/bodysphere/features/5267698. Accessed 14 Feb. 2024.
