The ancient philosopher Empedocles likened nature to a painter, while Socrates, in Plato's Phaedon, describes the Earth as a "sphere, varied with colors," meaning a round sphere adorned with many colors: at one place "sea-purple," or red, at another "golden-like," and in other areas, "whiter than gypsum or snow." If one were to observe these cavities of the Earth from above, "they would see that these cavities resemble metals and precious stones, silver and emerald, jasper and gold" (Plato, Phaedon, 110.b5, 11a). Thus, the world begins philosophically with color and is interpreted in its further philosophical and mythological development through color.

Orpheus will sing of Night, "the mother of gods and men, the source of all things," and he will describe the creation of the world as a golden rain that emerges from this very black Night, where black is the color of beginnings, the "dim," that which has not yet appeared, not yet shone (from the negative prefix ἀ- and the Homeric verb "μαρμαίρω," to shine), and gold, the sacred color of antiquity, the color of light and the life-giving sun.

Both of these colors, along with white and red, constitute the ancient Greek tetracolor system, a concept found already in the Presocratic philosophers and Homer. Specifically, "white" and "black" are the primary colors (Plato even calls them "principles"), which are placed at the two ends of the tetracolor spectrum. Between these two extremes, the other colors are grouped into two categories: one containing the light colors, those that border on white, and the other containing the shadowy colors, those moving toward "black." In the middle of this scale lies the third primary color, "red," as a middle value arising from the combination of the two extremes, white and black, bringing them together (Plato, Timaeus, 68b3-5).

The tetrad of primary colors is completed by yellow, or the "golden-like" of Democritus (which we briefly mentioned earlier), the "fair" of Plato, and Aristotle's "yellow of the rainbow" (Meteorology 375a6), which in the ancient Greek tetracolor scale is considered a midpoint between white and red. Yellow is also called "spring-colored," the color of spring, touching upon the green hues of nature.

Nature is the great Mother, the feminine principle, a powerful symbol in all cosmological myths of antiquity, not only in Greek tradition. The most beautiful season of nature is spring, and spring is essentially "spring-colored," i.e., green. It represents the burst of nourishing sap in the early days of Nature, when it awakens from its winter slumber with the warm kiss of the golden life-giving sun.

This green nature, like another Sleeping Beauty, is the Virgin, the one that will blossom and bear fruit, and her sacred mission is symbolically expressed through the colors that dominate her, especially green, which is not coincidentally the color of Resurrection and Hope (as it symbolizes Nature's victory over the silent winter). Green is often found in the worship of female deities. Athena, with her green eyes of the sea ("Glaucopis Athena," one of her most well-known epithets), unites with Hephaestus, the god of fire, and from their union, Erechtheus is born, the "earthly" one, the indigenous, the autochthonous, in a way that does not tarnish the characterization of the goddess as Virgin. She is the Virgin who creates earthly life, in the same way that Mary, the mother of God, becomes the emblem of Mercy, Grace, and Love and is honored as the Queen of Heaven (Regina Coeli), with green, white, blue, and pink dominating in her worship.

Pink is the color of the rose, a flower associated with Spring, and is symbolically connected with freshness. It is the "water" of the sky, which descends from the white and cold world of the higher spheres, and in the form of rain or dew, unites with heat, the solar fire (symbolically connected to the red element), ensuring the continuity of the life cycle. The word "pink," in its Latin form "rosa," comes from the earlier word "ros," which means rain and dew – and it is rain and dew that make the natural world fertile.

The pink color is linked to red, as it is considered a gradation of it, and red is the color of life and vital function, the color of blood and fire, symbolizing the heart. The head is the seat of Wisdom, but the heart is the seat of Love, which is never intellectual, even when it is granted by God as Grace. Heroes, who give their lives for others, walk in the dynamic of this color; deified beings, who sacrifice themselves in their earthly dimension, also walk in the dynamic of this color. It is no coincidence that this color equates wine with divine blood, whether offered at the Last Supper or symbolized in the Red Cloak of Dionysus in ancient Greek religion. Wine, after all, invigorates the heart, stimulates it, and the heart reaches the very origin of humanity, symbolizing the god who bleeds for humanity, whether named Jesus or Dionysus in the ancient version.

On the opposite end of red, in the ancient Greek tetracolor scale, stands yellow. Its shade is the "spring-colored" hue we mentioned earlier, which is gradated as green or "cyan," the color of the sky, wisdom, and higher spirituality, symbolized in the form of Zeus and also Athena in ancient worship. A shade of it is the yellow of the iris, the color of the sun and gold. It is the color of the halo and of divine presence through light, the color of the Word, the divine Word, completely merged with light. "In the beginning was the Word," says Saint John, "and in him was life and light," the light of men, a cosmogonic idea also expressed by the earlier Hermes Trismegistus, when in his work Poimandres, he states the emblematic phrase: "I am the Light, the God."

In return to the principles of color, to the foundations of the ancient Greek tetracolor system, to white and black, and I will conclude my speech with these principles. Black is the color of death, but also the symbol of new life, because every end is the completion of a cycle and the precondition for the creation of a new one. Black is the color of the Earth's depths, where the dead are buried, but also where the seed of new life is nurtured, that which I cannot yet see, hence "black," from the negative prefix "non-" and the Homeric verb "lāō," meaning to see, i.e., not seeing in the "black," in the darkness.

White, on the other hand, the counterpart of black in the ancient Greek tetracolor system, comes from the ancient verb "leussō," meaning to see clearly, to shine, and if black is opacity, white is the condition that will penetrate it. White is also mentioned as the color of death, but at the same time, it is the color of Transformation, of the milk that nourishes new life, of existence itself; it is the color of snow and purity, of innocence and wisdom.

The ancients symbolically attributed Divinity to the white color, the "Whole," and it is no coincidence that Virgil, in his Georgics, describes the god Pan (whose name refers to "pan," meaning totality) as "white as snow," essentially delimiting him as the driving force of life, always in connection with black. As Aristotle famously said, "For nature is both darkness and light."

#AncientGreekPhilosophersbyaModernGreekPhilosopher