Blue moon

[Crispina]

Is there any ancient writings about the "blue moon"? What if any, did they attribute to the changing color of the moon?

 

(By the way, I can't tell for sure if it's cloud cover or indeed the moon itself - but I'd say that is a blue moon out there tonight )

[Klingan]

I've never heard of it, but you could take a search at Perseus. Might come up with something! But try Lunar or something instead of the moon, as the translations are fairly archaic from time to time.

[Crispina]

Well, I was informed there is no such thing as a "blue" moon. Only means, a second full moon in the same month as in "Once in a blue moon (a second one occurs)". Thanks for the link.

[Maty]

There was a Roman general who decided to fight a battle by night because he did not like the (red) colour of the sun, but the Romans seem pretty sure that the moon was what it is - a spherical rock orbiting the earth and reflecting the light of the sun. so they don't seem to have even imagined it changing colour the way we do today.

 

Pliny the elder explains the phases of the moon - no moon when the moon is between us and the sun, full moon when we are between the sun and the moon, and the moon reflects sunlight 'just as sunbeams reflect off water'.

 

When we abandon the rational Pliny and look at the prodigies of Livy we get double moons (a check on the NASA website revealed that this is a rare optical effect!) and falling moons (slow-moving meteriods called bolides, probably) but the darn thing stays obstinately the same colour. And because it represents Artemis, a maiden goddess, that colour is pure white.

 

Like you I'll be interested to see if anyone can find an exception to this rule.