Color
As in Roman times, purple was reserved for the royal family; other colours in various contexts conveyed information as to class and clerical or government rank. Lower-class people wore simple tunics but still had the preference for bright colours found in all Byzantine fashions.
The Byzantine love for colour had its sinister side. The races in the Hippodrome used four teams: red, white, blue and green; and the supporters of these became political factions, taking sides on the great theological issues—which were also political questions—of Arianism, Nestorianism and Monophysitism, and therefore on the Imperial claimants who also took sides. Huge riots took place, in the 4th to 6th centuries and mostly in Constantinople, with deaths running into the thousands, between these factions, who naturally dressed in their appropriate colours. In medieval France there were similar colours-wearing political factions, called chaperons.
Read more about this topic: Byzantine Dress
Famous quotes containing the word color:
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every color and as good as sour balls.
I’m on a diet from death.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“But whenever the roof came white
The head in the dark below
Was a shade less the color of night,
A shade more the color of snow.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“In Florida consider the flamingo,
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—Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989)