Note 619 — INDIGO.

In Pliny’s time people coloured a white earth with indigo, or only with woad, vitrum, in the same manner as coarse lakes and crayons are made at present, and sold it for indigo. One of them he calls annularia, and this was one of the sealing earths, of which I have already spoken in the first volume. In my opinion it is the same white pigment which Pliny immediately after calls annulare: “Annulare quod vocant, candidum est, quo muliebres picturæ illuminantur.” These words I find nowhere explained, and therefore I shall hazard a conjecture. Pliny, I think, meant to say that “this was the beautiful white with which the ladies painted or ornamented themselves.”