Pliny's Natural History and red hair (maybe)

Pliny the Elder (born Gaius Plinius Secundus, AD 23/24 – 79), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia (Natural History), which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field. He died in AD 79 in Stabiae while attempting the rescue of a friend and his family from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

The largest single work to have survived from the Roman Empire to the modern day, the Natural History compiles information gleaned from other ancient authors. Despite the work's title, its subject area is not limited to what is today understood by natural history; Pliny himself defines his scope as "the natural world, or life". It is encyclopedic in scope, but its structure is not like that of a modern encyclopedia. It is the only work by Pliny to have survived, and the last that he published. He published the first 10 books in AD 77, but had not made a final revision of the remainder at the time of his death. The rest was published posthumously by Pliny's nephew, Pliny the Younger.

 

The work is divided into 37 books, organised into 10 volumes. These cover topics including astronomy, mathematics, geography, ethnography, anthropology, human physiology, zoology, botany, agriculture, horticulture, pharmacology, mining, mineralogy, sculpture, art, and precious stones.

Pliny's Natural History became a model for later encyclopedias and scholarly works as a result of its breadth of subject matter, its referencing of original authors, and its index.

The book VI (which is in the II volume) is about the geography of Asia (Black Sea, India and Far East). In chapter 24 (or 22 in some old translations) Pliny talks of four ambassadors coming from the island of Toprabane to Rome, to meet the Emperor Claudius. Today, this island is identified with Sri Lanka, but some argue that the geography of Sri Lanka has nothing to do with Topabrane as described by Pliny, and suggest Sumatra as a better choice. 

Map by Alain Mallet as Sri Lanka as Topabrane

Sumatra is a large island called Taprobane by ancient geographers.

 

For example, the ambassadors say their island is four days’ sailing from India, stretches about 2000 km and has a large lake in the middle with small islands used for grazing. They also say that in their land the Big Dipper and the Pleiades are not visible and (quote) “But what surprised them more than anything, was that the shadow of their bodies was thrown towards our hemisphere and not theirs, and that the sun arose on the left hand and set on the right, and not in the opposite direction.” All of this would be consistent with a land crossed dy the Equator (and the ambassadors would be living south of it). Thay add that, beyond the Emodian Mountains, there is a population called Seræ, with whom they trade. Of them, the ambassadors say (I quote from the original Latin) “… ipsos vero excedere hominum magnitudinem, rutilis comis, caeruleis oculis…” 

Which translates in English as "These people, they said, exceeded the ordinary human height, had flaxen hair, and blue eyes..."

Now, we have seen in previous posts that Latin adjective rutilus means red and is often used to refer to hair colour. I've checked several online Latin-English dictionaries and they all give red, golden red, ruddy and reddish as first translations. They also give reddish yellow and golden as additional translations (see here, here and here). 

This is my old Latin-Italian dictionary.

It too gives rossiccio (reddish) and fulvo (fawn) as first translations, and blond, golden and shining as additional translations. Above, you can see the conjugation of the verb rùtilo: shine, spark, redden.

So, basically, English translators didn't choose the first or second translation of rutilus, but the third, and I wonder why. Who knows, maybe they thought that, being red hair so rare, it whould have been impossibile for that ancient population to have that hair colour, and deemed blond hair more probable.

But what about translations in other languages? Let’s have a look, but keep in mind that those below are the first translations in their respective languages (they are available on the internet because copyrights have expired), so there’s the chance later translations are a bit different.

Italian (this is written with an old spelling).

 

Page 158: "Et ch'essi sono maggiori degli altri huomini, co' capei rossi, con gli occhi verdi..." (And that they are taller that other men, with red hair, with green eyes...)

So, in this translation they do have red hair, but the eye colour changes from blue to green.

French

"... que les Sères dépassaient la taille ordinaire, qu'ils avaient les cheveux rouges, les yeux bleus..." (...that the Seræ were taller that the average, that they had red hair, blue eyes..."

 

Spanish (old spelling)

Page 205: "Son sus cabellos rubios, los ojos verdes..." (Their hair is blond, their eyes green...)

I'm not a professional etymologist, but my idea is that the Spanish adjective rubio, in spite of its meaning, is connected to the Latin verb rŭbĕo = to be red, to blush.

German (old spelling)

 Page 211: "... ihr Haar rothlich, sie Hugen himmelblau..." (Their hair reddish, their eyes sky blue...)

On a final note, it is worth noting that, according to etymologists, rutilus comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *reudh- (which is, apparently, the only colour for which a definite common PIE root word has been found): red, ruddy. This is the same root of the Latin rufus (red-haired), Greek e-rythros (Greek tends to avoid beginning words with -r-); Sanskrit rudhira-; Avestan raoidita-; Old Church Slavonic rudru, Polish rumiany, Russian rumjanyj "flushed, red," of complexions, etc.; Lithuanian raudas; Old Irish ruad, Welsh rhudd, Breton ruz "red", Old English rēad, Old Norse rauðr, Danish rød, Old Saxon rod, Old Frisian rad, Middle Dutch root, Dutch rood, German rot, Gothic rauþs; etc.

So, no trace of blond. 😁