What I'm Reading: Purple, the Color, Its Origin . . .

From Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky:

"When the Romans took over the Phoenician salt trade, they discovered how to make a purple dye. A logical byproduct of fish salting, the dye was produced by salting murex, a Mediterranean mollusk . . . . The painstakingly extracted purple dye was a luxury item of such prestige that the color purple became a way of showing wealth and power. Julius Caesar decreed that only he and his household could wear purple-trimmed togas. The high priests of Judaism, the Cohanim, dyed the fringes of their prayer shawls purple. Cleopatra dyed the sails of her warship purple. . . . Pliny wrote that men were slaves to 'luxury . . . inasmuch as men scour . . . all the rocks of [North Africa] for the murex and for purple.'"

Photo by Patrick Hamilton.