The Colour of Olive Leaves : Vergil Aeneid 5.309

In the prize-giving after the foot-race of Anchises’ funeral games in Aeneid 5,

Aeneas promises to award garlands of olive leaves to the first three runners (5.308-9):

tres praemia primi

accipient flavaque caput nectentur oliva.

Flavaque (in all the major MSS and read by Gellius 2.26.12) has rightly aroused

doubt; in what sense are olive-leaves ‘golden’ ? The doubt increases to suspicion

when we recall that these garlands were plainly green when they were seen earlier

amongst the group of prizes for the games at 5.110, viridesque coronae.

Gellius’citation of the passage suggests that flavaque was suspected as early as the

second century CE (loc.cit. et, quod mirari quosdam video, frondes oleraum a

Vergilio ‘flavae’ dicuntur), and an alternative soon became available. Servius’ note

here indicates that the text he had before him read fulvaque for flavaque, despite the

misleading lemma (as always in Servius, the choice of his modern editor) : flava

viridi, ut supra "iaspide fulva", where the reference is to his note on 4.261, pro viridi,

ut "fulvaque caput nectentur oliva"; this quotation of 5.309 confirms that Servius read

fulvaque and not flavaque in that passage. But fulvaque does not solve the problem,

despite Servius’ identification of fulvus and viridis : fulvus is very much in the same

colour-spectrum as flavus, ‘tawny, ruddy gold’, and neither adjective is in fact found

of olives or their leaves elsewhere in Latin.

This has left scholars attempting to defend the generally transmitted flavaque.

Such defences have taken two forms. The first strategy is to argue that flavus has its

normal sense of golden colour. James Henry (Aeneidea III (Dublin, 1889) 89) in a

typically lively note explained flavus as the colour of the olive-tree’s yellow pollen

spread all over its leaves, but this ignores the evidence of green colour at Aeneid

5.110 and is an unlikely explanation once the branches are detached from the tree and

woven into a wreath. He also saw this as the explanation of Aeschylus Persae 616-7

/

‘there is present too the fragrant product of the golden olive-tree which

flourishes forever throughout its life in foliage’, which would indeed seem to support

flavaque at Aeneid 5.309, since flavus is often the equivalent of (cf. e.g. ThLL

6.888.11ff). But the Aeschylean passage is not fully parallel; the context is clearly

talking about olive oil in an offering at a tomb, and the colour-adjective clearly

reflects the colour of the oil rather than of the leaves of the olive-tree from which it

comes (see the full discussion by H.D.Broadhead, The Persae of Aeschylus

(Cambridge,1960) 161-2). Jacques André in his standard work on terms for colour in

Latin has an extensive discussion of flavaque at Aeneid 5.309 (Étude sur les termes de

couleur dans la langue latine [Études et Commentaires 7] (Paris, 1949) 130-2).

Having earlier defined flavus in general as having a colour-range from a bright yellow

close to white to a shade close to red, he rightly rejects Henry’s explanation of 5.309

but then suggests unconvincingly that the adjective there refers to the reflection of

golden light on the grey-green leaves of the olive. Equally hopeful is the argument of

R.J.Edgeworth (The Colors of the Aeneid (New York, 1992) 129) that ‘olive-leaves

are green when first taken from the tree, but quickly turn yellow’ : as observed above,

the leaves were green at 5.110 and are unlikely to have changed colour since then.

The second strategy is to argue that flavus can mean something other than

‘golden’. This is effectively the reasoning behind J.W.Mackail’s view (The Aeneid

(Oxford, 1930) 181) that flavus accurately refers to ‘the pale golden-grey of the

leafage’); this seems highly dubious in both semantics and botany. The Thesaurus

Linguae Latinae (6.888.3-10) views flavus at Aeneid 5.309 as having the sense of

‘grey-green’, Greek , but can cite only two further examples of this supposed

sense, which seems intuitively very unlikely, even considering that Greek and Roman

colour-words may well be used inconsistently and with a different semantic range

from that of their modern equivalents. The supposed examples are Pacuvius Loutra

fr. 244 Ribbeck, 266 Warmington lymphis flavis (cited by Gellius 2.26.13) and Ennius

Ann.377 Skutsch marmore flavo. In both cases the adjective seems to refer to the

lighter colour of foaming water, not to the grey-green colour of still water, as Skutsch

rightly explains on the Ennian passage (O.Skutsch, The Annals of Quintus Ennius

(Oxford, 1985), 543); for flavus of the colour of foaming water see also Vergil Aeneid

9.816 (of the Tiber) gurgite flavo. Skutsch further claims (loc.cit.) that at Aeneid

5.309 flavus refers to the whitish underside of olive leaves : that these leaves should

be set with their undersides showing in a celebratory garland seems unlikely, and once

again this idea is contradicted by Aen. 5.110 viridesque coronae. That flavus can

mean ‘grey-green’ at Aeneid 5.309 or elsewhere thus seems highly improbable.

A solution is at hand : for flavaque read not Servius’ fulvaque but glaucaque,

no drastic change palaeographically. This is a natural adjective for the colour of the

olive-leaf, as can be seen from the description of Tiresias’ similar wreath of olive-

leaves at Statius Theb.2.99 glaucaeque innexus olivae / vittarum provenit honos (cf.

also Valerius Flaccus 3.436 glaucasque comis praetexere frondes / imperat), recalling

the common use of the equivalent Greek adjective for the leaves of the olive

(cf. Sophocles OC 701 , Pindar Ol.3.13

/).

Corpus Christi College, Oxford S.J.HARRISON