The long‐standing association of purple with luxury derived from its use as a defining feature of Lydian, Persian and Hellenistic royal dress, as well as the iconographic influences of the Etruscans. These associations may have been very old indeed. This costume colour was outlawed in the Twelve Tables (the earliest Roman lawcode) in the early Republic, although by the start of the second‐century BC, it was extensively exploited across the board, worn by low‐ranking colonial and municipal magistrates as well as Roman senators, by priests, boys, women as well as Latin allies. According to Polybius in his account of Roman funerals, purple in quantity and quality was very carefully policed and colour‐coded according to the deceased’s political status, and in the late Republic any excessive use of the colour could betray aspirations to kingship and anti‐establishment sympathies – something that went hand‐in‐hand with a growing nationalistic anti‐oriental invective. For similar reasons, its excessive use by women was also treated with suspicion. The significance of purple, then, evolved in tandem with the social and political developments of the late Republic and early Empire; as it changed, its ramifications became increasingly contentious, establishing the dye as a classic medium for controversy, uncertainty and misunderstanding. So potent was this colour in contemporary thought, that legislation implemented by Julius Caesar ruled that purple should be restricted to senators holding magistracies. Laws implemented by early Roman emperors also attempted to restrict the use of purple to certain individuals, and at certain times. Under Augustus, purple developed a reputation as a foil to the values of moderation, simplicitas and civility associated with the new regime. Taking it too seriously, or giving it too much attention, came to be a familiar topos for attack in Augustan literature. Among a list of jokes ascribed to Augustus, one writer describes the emperor making a parody of the dye’s colour and its claims to style: When Augustus complained about the darkness (obscuritas) of some Tyrian purple which he had ordered to be bought, and the salesman replied 'Hold it up higher and look at it from below', he made this witty remark: 'What? Have I, in order that the Roman people can say that I have a sense of style, got to walk about on my roof?' Macrobius, Saturnalia 2.4.14
Augustus' joke parodied the fad for dark shades of purple that had been given currency by traditionalists like Cato, but it also parodied the contemporary emphasis on fashion and the politics of display: the colour purple had become a sine qua non for prestige and imperial power and there was considerable social pressure for it to be seen and recognised. In the Stoic commentaries of Seneca, the dye received its most critical press yet, becoming (along with gold and polychrome marble) a standard symptom of luxury and contemporary moral decline. By the first century A.D., it had become (in spite of its cost and moral associations) a 'must‐have' for Roman social climbers. The following century, Artemidorus' book The Interpretation of Dreams considered 6