D. Data Supplied by Pliny Concerning the Varieties of Purple Fabric in as far as These Have a Bearing Upon the Determination of the Colour of Tekhelet.

Pliny is our chief source of information on the ancient purple and its varieties. We naturally turn to him for light on hyacinthus. In the 9th book that author gives a scarcely full account of purple dyeing. He names only two sorts of purple, Purpura Tyria or dibapha and Purpura amethystina, describing the latter as “color eximius ille.” In another passage he divides purple into three varieties. Commenting upon the imitation of the colours of flowers by means of certain pigments he says:

In the same book Pliny in dealing with a certain species of Viola which he qualifies as “purplish” (purpurea) he remarks “ab his ianthina vestis (from these Janthina clothes).” ² The species in question has been identified with the Viola odorata Linné. Nature has thus preserved for us an illustration of the colour of the Purpura ianthina. W. Adolf Schmidt³ comes to the conclusion that amethystina, ianthina, and hyacinthina are synonyms denoting one and the same purple-variety. The identification of ianthina with amethystina is based upon Pliny 21, 8, just quoted (“et ipse in purpurum quemque ianthinum appelarimus”). The equation of hyacinth with the two is founded upon the following reasoning: Pliny and Vergil emphasize the blackness or darkness of shade of the violet purple (Purpura violacea). Philo qualifies the hyacinth purple as black or dark: Purpura hyacinthina is the same as P. amesthystina or ianthina. Another argument is derived from the fact that the Purpura violacea is classed as Purpura blatta or pure purple unmixed with other materials. Now the Lex Valentina⁴ divides Purpura blatta into two classes (a) oxyblatta; and (b) hyacinthina. Oxyblatta, as is shown by Schmidt being identical with the Purpura Tyria, hyacinthina must be identical with the Purpura violacea, ergo, etc. … Dr. Dedekind accepts these equations. Tekhelet would thus be violet purple of the colour of the Viola odorata L. Dr. Dedekind, however, in subscribing on the one hand to the equations established by Schmidt and in maintaining on the other that the species furnishing Tekhelet must be identified with Murex trunculus is somewhat inconsistent. The amethyst or ianthina colour as described by Pliny, was the result of a mixture in certain proportions of the dyestuffs obtained from two different species, the one furnishing black and the other red pigment. It is precisely this fact which at once cuts away the ground from under the attempted identification of Tekhelet as handed down by Talmudic tradition with Pliny’s Purpura amesthystina or ianthina. Tekhelet according to the Talmud was dyed with the pigment of one particular species of which a description is given Menahot 44a. Schmidt being unacquainted with the Talmud was not aware of this fatal objection. On quite different grounds, however, Schmidt reaches a certain conclusion which if applied here might save his position. Having learnt from Bochart that according to Maimonides the colour of Tekhelet was sky-blue, (not violet or amethyst-like) he draws a distinction between the Tekhelet of the LXX, and Philo and that of Maimonides.

After the promulgation of the imperial decrees placing heavy restrictions upon the manufacture and use of both the Purpura Tyria and Purpura amethystina, the Jews, so Schmidt thinks, had perforce to replace the traditional Tekhelet by a variety of the Purpura conchyliata, the latter not falling within the scope of the imperial legislation respecting purple. He accordingly identifies Maimonides’ Tekhelet with the heliotrope variety of conchylium. Now, as the Purpura conchyliata, according to Pliny, was dyed with only black purple pigment Schmidt might have met the argument from the Talmudic description of the Tekhelet hillazon by the assumption that already in early Talmudic times Tekhelet was a kind of Purpura conchyliata. It is, however, rather unlikely that such an important change in the manufacture of ritual Tekhelet took place in Tanaitic times. If that were the case would not Talmudic tradition have preserved some reminiscence of an alteration made in the ritual under the force of imperial persecution?

In view of Schmidt’s identification of Iakinthos (Hyacinth purple) with Purpura amethystina and ianthina it strikes one as very strange that the Greek versions never render Tekhelet by any of these latter terms but always Iakinthos. Pliny on the other hand never mentions Purpura hyacinthina. This too is a fact which is hardly without significance. Was the hyacinth purple only one out of several species comprised in the designation Purpura amethystina or ianthina: 

I should remark in the first place that ianthina does not seem to me synonymous with amethystina. Amethystina is the generic name denoting varieties of purple more or less reproducing the colour of the amethyst gem. Compare Pliny: 

Ianthina, on the other hand, is the designation of a certain species of P. amethystina. This is, I think, what Pliny means when he says: 

Purpura amethystina, it may also be noted, occurs far more frequently than ianthina.

That Iakinthos (hyacinth purple) was not synonymous with ianthina (ianthina purple) in Ephesian usage, can be shown to be so earlier than Diogenes Laertus can, I think, by an argument amounting to proof. Athenaeus quotes from Democritus Ephesius⁶ certain observations upon the extravagance of the Ephesians in matters of dress: 

 Ianthina and hyacinthina are plainly distinguished. Amethystina as the name of a coloured fabric, so far as I know, nowhere occurs in Greek literature.

Aquilas⁸ again may be cited as testifying that ianthinos and hyacinthios were held distinct at least in Asiatic Greek usage about 100 C E. עורות תחשים (orot-tehashim) which is rendered in the LXX by D. iakinthina is translated by Aquilas D. ianthina. The reason for this departure from the old version is quite unknown but it shows clearly that there was a difference between ianthinos and iakintos.

The colour of the ianthina is sometimes described as black which indicates a deep dark hue; it is also sometimes likened to that of the sea.⁹ Now as the colour of the hyacinth fabric (Tekhelet) is, as will be seen later, similarly described on the one hand as black and on the other as resembling the colour of the sea, it would appear that the resemblance was greater than the difference between the two varieties of purple. Hieronymus in fact states that both ianthina and hyacinthus resembled the dark blue of the sky. 

 The difference must have consisted, I should think, in the greater blueness of the hyacinth variety, or what amounts to the same, in its being closer than the ianthina purple to the deep dark blue of the serene Asiatic sky or of the Mediterranean along the Syrian and Palestinian coasts.¹¹

It would appear that, while in the preparation of ianthina the black purple-pigment was mixed in a certain proportion with the red dye of the buccinum, in the manufacture of hyacinthus black dye alone (from the Purpura or pelagia) was employed. It is to this that the difference may have been due. This is sustained by the Talmudic tradition which knows only of one species of mollusc as used in the dyeing of Tekhelet.