Did You Know the Red Carpet Originated in Ancient Greece?

 

The ancient Greeks were always one step ahead, whatever they put their mind to, they did it well; philosophy, architecture, mathematics, literature; they were the leaders.

Did you know though, that they were the first to roll out The Red Carpet; The Crimson Path, a symbol of status, style and affluence, more than 2,500 years before the first celebrity, Gucci – clad foot, hit the famous red carpet at the Academy Awards (The Oscars)?

The Crimson Path, or, The Red Carpet, only for the feet of gods to walk upon, was first mentioned in the play Agamemnon, a tragedy, written by Aeschylus, the father of tragedy, in 458 BC.

Today, 2,500 years later, red carpets aren’t associated with godliness but with celebrity and fame (although, I suppose you might say, many who do walk the walk of fame today, do consider themselves gods, elevated to such a status by us, their public).

 

The Many Faces of Red

 

Agamemnon – a tragedy – Aeschylus 458 BC

 

 

 

Agamemnon is the first play in the trilogy, the Oresteia, considered to be Aeschylus’ ‘pièce de résistance’, written in the 5^th century BC, an update on Homer’s The Iliad, his sequence to  the The Odyssey, written  in around the 8th or 7th century BC.

Agamemnon, King of Argos (or Mycenae), has been away from home for ten years, fighting against the Trojans who had kidnapped his brother’s wife, the beautiful Helen.

The play begins when a watchman spies a fire, which signals to him that Troy has been captured and his king, Agamemnon, is on his way home.

This is the good news; the bad news is, owing to bad weather on the journey to Troy, Agamemnon had been forced to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, in order for the goddess Artemis to send him favorable winds.

Hearing of Agamemnon’s return, Clytemnestra, wife of Agamemnon and mother of Iphigenia, waits outside the palace to welcome her husband, who turns up on his chariot with Cassandra alongside him.

Cassandra, a Trojan princess, whom Agamemnon has taken as a concubine, in Greek mythology, is cursed to utter true prophecies which people never believed; they should have!

 

The crimson path

 

Clytemnestra orders a ‘floor of crimson broideries to spread for the King’s path’;

‘Let all the ground be red / Where those feet pass; and Justice, dark of yore, / Home light him to the hearth he looks not for’, whereupon her slaves  unroll a crimson path of dark red tapestries, so the returning hero’s feet would not touch the ground on the way from his chariot to the palace.

Red fabric had an extortionate price and was only for gods to walk upon, which caused Agamemnon to be reluctant to set foot upon the carpet for fear of offending the gods; who was he, Agamemnon, a mere mortal, to carry out such a fanciful act?

 

 

Clytemnestra eventually, after much coaxing, manages to persuade Agamemnon to walk across the red carpet to the palace.

 Cassandra though, who suddenly has a flashback, in which she sees Agamemnon’s father, Atreus, angry at his brother Thyestes for sleeping with his wife, murder Thyestes’s children and feed them to him, is hesitant to follow, as this evil act, she says, has brought a curse upon the palace.

Cassandra’s flashback passes, only to be replaced by a premonition of what is to happen in the near future; she and Agamemnon are to be murdered, by none other than Clytemnestra.

Cassandra accepts this as the hand of fate, their destiny and enters the palace.

 

The King is dead

 

Minutes later, cries are heard coming from within the palace and when the doors are flung open; Clytemnestra is revealed, standing over the dead bodies of Agamemnon and Cassandra.

Clytemnestra, who now has a lover; Thyestes’s son, Aegisthus, has killed Agamemnon to avenge their daughter Iphigenia, takes no responsibility; crying out, ‘it wasn’t my fault, The Fates made me do it, they were only carrying out the curse Thyestes brought upon this forsaken family’.

 

 

It comes to light that Aegisthus, had planned with Clytemnestra, to murder Agamemnon in revenge for what Atreus (Agamemnon’s father) did to his brothers and sisters.

The play ends with Clytemnestra and Aegisthus dreaming of becoming the rulers of Argos, little do they know though, that Agamemnon’s son, Orestes, is on his way home to avenge the death of his father.

 

Why Red?

 

 

It’s no accident that this sacred, crimson carpet, first mentioned by Aeschylus, over 2,500 years ago was red rather than say, white, black or yellow, the other three of the four colours mostly used by ancient Greek painters, red in ancient Greece was considered a divine colour.

Red was the most prized dye, as it was the most difficult to make and the most expensive, the king of red dyes was the kermes dye, one of the most beautiful and sought after red dyes in ancient Greece, owing to its brilliance and stability.

 

How red dye is made; the kermes insect

 

Kermes is a tiny, scale insect, native to the Mediterranean region, which live of the sap of the Kermes oak tree (Quercus coccifera), from which red dye is extracted.

 

 

Scale insects secrete a waxy coating for defense that resembles fish scales, hence their name, they vary from minute organisms 1-2 mm, which grow beneath wax covers, to shiny pearl-like objects about 5 mm.

From the grain-like appearance of the Kermes insect comes the Modern Greek word for the colour red: kokkinos, (kokkos, in Greek, means grain).

The kermes dye, a rich red crimson, is extracted from the dried bodies of the adult females, which are mostly immobile and are attached to the plant on which they are feeding.

After Medieval times, the kermes insect was replaced by the cochineal, another scale insect from which the natural dye carmine is produced.

An inferior Red dye was obtained from the root of a small flowering plant called the madder.

 

Purple or Crimson?

 

 

 

In ancient Greece, crimson, a strong, purplish red colour, meant the colour of the kermes dye produced from a scale insect, Kermes vermilio, the word crimson is now used in general for slightly bluish-red colors that are between red and rose.

 

Porphyria; Phoenician red

 

Tyrian purple, or Porphyria, from the ancient Greek word porphura, meaning purple, also known as Phoenician red, Phoenician purple, royal purple, imperial purple or imperial dye, is a reddish-purple natural dye, which takes its name from Tyre, in Lebanon.

 

 

The Purple Men of Tyre

 

Tyre, was famous for its textiles and a photo-reactive dye, secreted by sea snails, originally named Murex, which changed color from yellow to purple when exposed to sunlight and air, this dye was worth its weight in gold, as it took over 10,000 snails to extract one gram of the dye.

The word purple comes from purpura, the Latin word for the sea snail, as does the name Phoenicians, the Purple Men of Tyre in Lebanon – the ancient dyers.

 

 

A cheaper process of creating purple (crimson) was to firstly dye fabric blue and then over the blue, dye it again with red.

As this was the most expensive and difficult dye to produce, purple (crimson) became a symbol of wealth and royalty, in fact, in the 15th century Italian silk industry, both Venice and Florence passed laws to stop sellers from conning customers by using cheaper dyes to simulate more expensive fabric.

 

 What does the colour red symbolize?

 

In ancient Greece, red marked a shift in the different stages of life, youths, on the brink of manhood, wore red cloaks, brides wore red veils and when death caught up with the ancient Greeks, red signified the end; shrouds were red.

 

 Courage

 

 

In western countries red is an indication of courage and sacrifice, mostly as it’s the colour of blood, in the thirteenth century, Pope Innocent IV, granted the use of the red hat to the cardinals (who were sometimes referred to as ‘princes of the blood’), as a symbol of their willingness to shed their blood for the church.

The red cardinal bird is named after the Sacred College of Cardinals.

 

 

(It might be worth a mention here, that red is also the colour of Satan.)

During the First Crusade, the Christian soldiers bore a banner depicting a red cross on a white background; the St. George’s Cross, which later became the flag of England and later still, part of the Union Jack of the United Kingdom.

Renaissance painters, more often than not, painted Christ and the Virgin Mary in red robes.

Roman soldiers wore red tunics, and their officers red cloaks; paludamentums, which, subject to the quality of the dye used, ranged from crimson to purple.

 

Love, passion, hatred and anger

 

 

 

Come Valentine’s Day, shops are awash with red hearts and blood-red roses tied up with crimson ribbons symbolizing not only love but deep passion, they do say though, there’s a fine line between love and hate; red is also associated with anger, we’ve all heard the saying ‘he saw red’.

Red was the colour of Mars (Aris in Greek) the god of war, the planet of the same name was named after him owing to its red colour.

 

A warning of danger

 

 

Today, red is the international color of warnings of danger, used on stop signs and flags.

Back in the day, when the horse and carriage outnumbered cars, a man would walk ahead of the car, waving a red flag, to warn horse drawn carriages of imminent danger.

 If the opposition waved a red flag during war in the Middle Ages, it was best to cross yourself three times and ask God for courage as this meant no prisoners taken, it was a fight to the death.

Seeing a red flag flying from a pirate ship had a similar meaning, they would show no mercy.

 

 

Red lights, meaning stop to most, may have another meaning for others as red lights also signify red – light areas, brothels and bordellos!

Here’s a little bonus for you, in ancient Greece, if a woman wore red lipstick, or whatever the equivalent of lipstick was in those days, it meant you were ‘A lady of the night’, and anyone, of the profession, shall we say, who flaunted themsemseves on the streets without the compulsory red lips, would be punished for impersonating a lady of high class and regard.

 

The Oscars

 

 

The highlight of the Academy Awards, known as the Oscars, has to be the red carpet moment; the moment when celebrities, set foot on the crimson path, first mentioned more than 2500 years ago by the ancient Greek, Aeschylus; ‘father of tragedy’, to walk in the footsteps of gods and royalty.

The Academy Awards, the most looked – forward to awards in the entertainment industry around the world, awarded annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), is the oldest entertainment awards ceremony worldwide.

 

Walk the walk

 

The red carpet was first connected with Hollywood in 1922, at the opening of Grauman’s Egyptian Theater in 1922 when it hosted the first Hollywood movie premiere; Robin Hood, starring Douglas Fairbanks.

The first Academy Awards was held on May 16, 1929, at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, a private affair, hosted by Douglas Fairbanks, with an audience of fewer than three hundred people, as yet though; there was no sign of the red carpet.

A year later in 1930, the awards were broadcast on the radio and in 1953

The winners are awarded a golden statue depicting a knight in art deco style, officially called the “Academy Award of Merit more commonly known as the Oscar, originally sculpted by George Stanley from a design sketch by Cedric Gibbons.

 

 

It was not until Monday, April 17, 1961, at the 33rd Academy Awards, held at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, hosted by Bob Hope, that the red carpet made its debut at the Oscars and went on to be the biggest star of the show!

 

 

In 1964, the organizers of the Oscars, made their best move yet and decided to film outside the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, giving the world a chance to see the celebrities arriving in all their glory, alighting one by one from their limousines, to cross the red carpet to the Auditorium, just as King Agamemnon stepped down from his chariot, to cross the crimson path to his palace, all those years ago in ancient Greece.

 

Showing its true colours

 

In 1966, at the 38^th Academy Awards, again hosted by Bob Hope, the event was broadcast in colour for the first time, since then, the red carpet has become synonymous with the Oscars.

 

 

The next time you settle down to watch the celebrities of the moment strutting their stuff on the iconic red carpet, wear something red, whilst reclining on a luxurious red velvet sofa, with a glass of red wine to hand, because, after all, you know you’re worth it and the American author and  clairvoyant, Edgar Cayce, did  say:

‘It can be a fascinating game, noticing how any person with vitality and vigor will have a little splash of red in a costume, in a room, or in a garden …’