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.
AIA-2A