The Greek Way

One of the attendants is a beautiful boy and as he fills the cups Pericles bethinks him of the poets and quotes a line about the “purple light” upon a fair young cheek. The younger general is critical: it had never seemed to him that the color-adjective was well chosen. He preferred another poet’s use of rosy to describe the bloom of youth. Pericles on his side objects: that very poet had elsewhere used purple in the same way when speaking of the radiance of young loveliness.