Pliny and the Prices of Pigments (15 min)

Presenters

Hilary Becker, Binghamton University, SUNY

Abstract

In his treatment of pigments in books 33 and 35, Pliny offers more than simply a dry, fact-laden survey of pigments. This survey of pigments potentially served as an appendix of sorts for elite patrons who needed to ensure that they were able to successfully manage their responsibilities, so that they might spot a fraudulent pigment, or so that they would not hire a contractor who mismanaged a failure-prone pigment. Pliny included the prices of pigments amid his survey of pigments, a detail that his two predecessors, Theophratus and Vitruvius, omitted from their respective surveys. This study considers Pliny’s potential sources for these prices and offers a new hypothesis as to why his readers would have found utility in this information.