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:
“All our Concord waters have two colors at least; one when viewed at a distance, and another, more proper, close at hand.... Walden is blue at one time and green at another, even from the same point of view. Lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To face the garment of rebellion
With some fine color that may please the eye
Of fickle changelings and poor discontents.
Which gape and rub the elbow at the news
Of hurly-burly innovation.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Since the quarrel
Will bear no color for the thing he is,
Fashion it thus: that what he is, augmented,
Would run to these and these extremities.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)