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Comment by reb | Hacker News Reader

Every time this wanders across the front page of HN, I wonder:

What are the chances this is more a description of the murkiness or opacity of a dark sea (compared to water near the shore) rather than the literal color of the water?

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As discussed previously, people are seriously overthinking this. Everyone who has been on a boat knows that the deep water is almost black. Like, you know, thick red wine in a ceramic container.

As someone having sailed on the Mediterranean Sea, I never questioned the comparison of the colour of deep sea with red wine. Also remember that Homer didn't drink wine in glass, but in earthenware, often glazed black. I'm pretty sure a red wine seen in a black crater is very dark indeed, like the deep sea.

This comment should be higher. That a poet should want to compare the viscosity and opacity of the sea to wine is a much more simple explanation -- and to my mind much more likely -- than exotic theories to explain why ancient Greeks didn't have the colour blue.

And the blue-was-perceived-differently theory has so much other evidence for it that is compelling besides this one metaphor. It's a beautiful choice of words that inspire, but people put too much weight on it as a riddle that can be or has been cracked.

Also maybe they literally had blue wine?

Red wine will turn blue when the pH gets too alkaline. You can also make actual blue wine using the grapes to make a dye, see Gïk's blue wine.

They also, to my understanding, mixed grape varieties, vintages, water, and perhaps other things in their wine, so it was quite a different beverage.

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