PURPLE VIOLET

Among the Latins, the Violet is thought to be called Viola, as if from vitula original: "quasi vitula," meaning 'little calf', with the letter 't' removed.

Servius reports that the Violet was also called vaccinium A term in classical Latin that could refer to the whortleberry/blueberry or a dark hyacinth; here the author discusses the confusion between these species by the Latins on the same occasion, citing a passage from Virgil's Bucolics:

White privets fall, but black whortleberries are gathered. original: "Alba Ligustra cadunt, Vaccinia nigra leguntur"

The yellow marigold paints the soft whortleberries

However, Virgil in his 10th Eclogue shows that the Whortleberry differs from the Violet:

And black are the Violets, and black the Whortleberries. original: "Et nigræ Violæ sunt, & Vaccinia nigra"

Vitruvius also, in the seventh book of his Architecture, distinguishes the Violet from the Whortleberry. For he records that the color of Attic Ochre Silis Attici|a prized yellow pigment used in ancient painting is made from the Violet, whereas an elegant purple is produced from the Whortleberry. Dyers, he says, when they wish to imitate Attic Ochre, throw dried Violets into a vessel with water and boil them over a fire; then, when it has reached the right consistency, they pour it onto a linen cloth, and squeezing it with their hands, they collect the violet-colored water into a mortar. By pouring Eretrian earth a type of medicinal and pigment-grade white clay from the Greek island of Euboea into this and grinding it, they produce the color of Attic Ochre. By the same method, tempering Whortleberry and mixing in milk, they make an elegant purple. How these came to be called Whortleberries will be explained in another and more appropriate place.

We return now to Violets, whose flowers and leaves possess a cold and moist temperament According to the humoral theory of medicine, these properties were used to counteract "hot" and "dry" illnesses like fevers or inflammation. Indeed, the flowers are useful for all internal inflammations, especially of the sides referring to pleurisy and the lungs: they soothe and smooth the roughness and irritation of the chest, the windpipe asperæ arteriæ|literally "rough artery," the historical term for the trachea, and the throat. They quench the excessive heat of the liver, kidneys, and bladder; they mitigate the burning of raging fevers; they dull the sharpness of bile; and they keep away and soothe thirst.

The syrup made from them—called drosaton original Greek: δροσάτον, meaning 'dewy' or, as Actuarius Joannes Actuarius, a 13th-century Byzantine court physician calls it, serapion original: σεράπιον, from which the word 'syrup' is derived—if it is boiled down from a liquid in which fresh Violets have been soaked many times, softens the bowels and draws out bile through the internal passages when taken in a dose of three or four ounces.

An oil is also made from Violets which is powerful for its cooling and moisturizing ability; when rubbed on the temples, it gently encourages sleep.