Purple has always been the color of enlightenment and the enlightened ones. It is Aphrodite's color and the Greek mystery religion cultivators bound it to song, scent and movement to enact her frequency. But the rich dyes of that age came from murex, a gland in the sea snail that only turned purple when exposed to the sun. This photochemically converted it into 6,6′‑dibromoindigo, an unusually deep, refractive and unstable purple that can shift toward red, blue, or black depending on angle and wear. Thus the purple of Sappho changed its behavior in response to light — it was alive, that is, to spirit.
Purple also exposed the holy — as it does today when spied between the cracks. But in those days it was palpable. It allowed the wearer to be seen as a Goddess, knowledge the Romans later used to project themselves as Gods — and punish any non-elite who wore the color with death. A single snail produced less than a gram of pigment, making murex highly prized as a kind of condensed sunlight. And it became, as Sappho recounts in this fragment, a controlled substance. The Persian ransack of Sardis cut off the Lydian snail trade to all but the elect ... but not the spiritually elect. In fact, Cleanaktidai — the local mafia of the time — could be heard as Illuminati without veering too far from the Greek. Sappho portrays the capture lyrically, balancing hope and grief for her daughter Kleis.
... Mom — who bore me to life
Incorruptible in her prime,
She plaited her hair in purple
To coil highest truth around her feeling.
She existed without a doubt.
But my daughter has hair so gold
But my daughter has hair so gold
It is a torch even brighter than the sun.
Fresh flowers heavy with vapor
Spun spiral to form fit her head
And now something has happened to the mitra:
The iridescent purple
Gone from the Ionian ports.
I can braid you, Kleis, in patterns
But have no means to change that fact;
The mitra is for the Mytilenians.
Exile can't hold luminescence ...
These things of the Cleanaktidai ...
Mementoes ... they have flowed horribly away.
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98a
. . ] . θος· ἀ γάρ με γέννα[τ
σ]φ̣ᾶς ἐπ’ ἀλικίας μέγ[αν
κ]όσμον, αἴ τις ἔχη φόβα⟨ι⟩ς̣[
π̣ορφύρ̣ῳ κατελιξαμέ[να πλόκῳ,
ἔ̣μμεναι μά̣λα τοῦτο δ̣[ή·
ἀ̣λλ’ ἀ ξανθοτέραις ἔχη[
τ̣αὶς κόμαις δάϊδος προ[
σ]τεφάνοισιν ἐπαρτία[ις
ἀ̣νθέων ἐριθαλέων·
μ]ι̣τράναν δ’ ἀρτίως κλ[
π̣οικίλαν ἀπὺ Σαρδίω[ν
. . . ] . αονίας πόλ{ε}ις1
98b
σοὶ δ’ ἔγω Κλέι ποικίλαν
οὐκ ἔχω πόθεν ἔσσεται
μιτράν⟨αν⟩· ἀλλὰ τῲ Μυτιληνάῳ
. . . . . . .
παι . α . ειον ἔχην πο . [
αἰκε̣ . η̣ ποικιλασκ . . . . [
ταῦτα τὰς Κλεανακτίδα̣[ν
φύγας̣ † . . ι̣σαπολισεχει †
μνάματ’· .ἴ̣δε γὰρ αἶνα διέρρυε̣[ν
