Roman wall painting of musculata in color from first century

[mcbishop]

Of course comparing say the first image to the statues we have you can see the ripped off the entire idea from earler times. So why would they not have taken the colors also? Also there is a tendency amoung artists to make things look like there own times. To look like what they have seen with their own eyes.

Also the colors match exactly Caligulas statue - Red, Blue and White. [url:2llrxe0p]http://www.romanhideout.com/news/2004/Theguardian20041119.asp[/url]

Proves nothing, as there is a demonstrable tendency towards archaization in the Roman world (as with the statuette depicting Nero as Alexander in the BM). The colours on the Caligula statue might deliberately recall those of Hellenistic times for all sorts of reasons to which we no longer have access. As for the paintings, one could argue that there are just as many reasons why the artist would slavishly copy the colours of the original as contribute his own contemporary 'take' on a scene.

All I'm saying is that this sort of evidence proves nothing; it offers a valuable range of alternatives, but it could just as easily not represent contemporary colours as it could accurately reflect them. As with experimental archaeology, it is important to be clear about the limitations (and context) of the evidence (a lesson many prehistorians need to learn with their sometimes overly promiscuous use of ethnographic parallels).

Mike Bishop