Tyrian

Mauve was initially called "Tyrian purple."

There was an ancient city; the Tyrian settlers held it: Carthage, standing afar opposite Italy and the mouths of the Tiber, rich in trade and very harsh in the study of war. Juno is said to have valued this one city more than all lands, even above Samos.

But she had heard that an offspring, led by Trojan blood, would one day overturn the Tyrian citadels; from this would come a nation ruling widely and proud in war, for the destruction of Libya: thus the Fates spun out their destiny.

There stood a city, fronting far away / the mouths of Tiber and Italia's shore, / a Tyrian settlement of olden day, / rich in all wealth, and trained to war's rough lore, / Carthage the name, by Juno loved before / all places, even Samos.

But she had heard, how men of Trojan seed / those Tyrian towers should level, how again / from these in time a nation should proceed, / wide-ruling, tyrannous in war, the bane / (so Fate was working) of the Libyan reign.

Then his plaintive tone / no more could Venus bear, but interrupts her son: / "Stranger", she answered, "whosoe'er thou be; / not unbeloved of heavenly powers, I ween, / thou breath'st the vital air, whom Fate's decree / permits a Tyrian city to have seen."

E'en such was Dido; so with joyous mien, / urging the business of her rising state, / among the concourse passed the Tyrian queen.

"Who knows not Troy, th' AEneian house of fame, / the deeds and doers, and the war's renown / that fired the world? Not hearts so dull and tame / have Punic folk; not so is Phoebus known / to turn his back upon our Tyrian town."

"Else, would ye settle in this realm, the town / I build is yours; draw up your ships to land. / Trojan and Tyrian will I treat as one."

"Now learn, how best to compass my design. / To Tyrian Carthage hastes the princely boy, / prompt at the summons of his sire divine, / my prime solicitude, my chiefest joy, / fraught with brave store of gifts, saved from the flames of Troy."

Still had she gazed; but 'midst the tide Two angel forms were seen to glide, The Genii of the stream; Their scaly armour's Tyrian hue Thro' richest purple to the view Betrayed a golden gleam.

It was no longer torture-torn and hateful, as I had seen it when she was cursing her dead rival by the leaping flames, no longer icily terrible as in the judgment-hall, no longer rich, and sombre, and splendid, like a Tyrian cloth, as in the dwellings of the dead.

I was wondering at these hanging gardens amid the forest of pink and white marble, red sardonyx, blue-gray, and cream, and black bricks, and green and yellow and tyrian tiles, when the sight of a lansquenet guarding the entrance to a casern reminded me of the promise I had made the officer of the peltasts the night before.