From Pallanteum@aol.com Sun Dec 31 12:47:27 2000 Received: from mxu4.u.washington.edu (mxu4.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW00.12) with ESMTP id MAA45664 for ; Sun, 31 Dec 2000 12:47:26 -0800 From: Pallanteum@aol.com Received: from imo-d09.mx.aol.com (imo-d09.mx.aol.com [205.188.157.41]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id MAA09594 for ; Sun, 31 Dec 2000 12:47:25 -0800 Received: from Pallanteum@aol.com by imo-d09.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v28.35.) id d.d4.6a76bd (7867) for ; Sun, 31 Dec 2000 15:47:17 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Date: Sun, 31 Dec 2000 15:47:16 EST Subject: Colors of Substances (was: Fwd: Cato trans....) To: classics@u.washington.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 5.0 for Mac sub 28 In a message dated 12/31/2000 14:12:52, 73071.327@compuserve.com writes: > >... which mentions a couple of things already mentioned by AK, i.e. > > >that mined salt tends to be grey >David, you must not believe everything you read! Mined salt does not >tend to be grey. I have seen many mines: Hallstatt is purplish-grey; France >whitish grey; Cheshire Red; Poland white, there is also clear blue tainted halite. The >greyish content is usually the earthy part of it. The whiter it is, the more >pure. > > >and that salt that is evaporated in > >'salt swamps' can acquire a reddish hue from various > >bacterial/algaeical beasties. This brings to mind a question I have long had... What was the color of water in ancient Rome? There were no processing plants, no chlorine, no filtering, etc. I find it hard to believe that it arrived fresh from the aqueducts and distribution nodes a clear and sparkling. Perhaps a cloudy white? Mark Keith pallanteum@aol.com .