Over the last week, the internet has been overwhelmed by an argument over the color of a dress. Some people see the image as gold and white, while others see it as blue and black.  Despite looking at a single image, it is obvious that we all are capable of perceiving colors differently.  Blue in particular.

This is nothing new. Homer referred to the famously blue Aegean as the “wine dark sea.” When did the wine dark sea turn blue?

In the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer never uses the word “blue” once. William Gladstone, the British prime minister, was also a classical scholar, who wrote 1700-page study of Homer’s epic poetry. In one chapter, he describes Homer’s strange choice of colors. Sheep wool and ox skin are purple. Honey is green, while horses and lions are red. The sky is filled with copper or iron colored stars, but neither the sky, nor the sea, nor anything else in his poetry is ever “blue.”  Gladstone was so baffled by this confused yet incomplete rainbow that he theorized that the ancient Greeks must have been not capable of distinguishing color. Science does not support his theory, which, in its day, was met largely with derision.

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