The Colours of the Soul in Plutarch and in the Apocryphal Acts of John

Abstract

It is well known how sometimes Literature makes strange friends on the road, and this is probably the case we are going to deal with: the references to the colors of the soul in the plutarchean De sera numinis vindicta and in the Apocryphal Acts of John. In spite of several scholars have dedicated important works to analyze extensively the topic in both texts, their interesting similarities have not deserved the same attention. Therefore, the main issue of this paper is to point out and examine the common topic of the relationship colors-passions of the souls in the mentioned texts and their contemporaries, in order to understand its origin and development in the Greek literature during the II and III centuries of our era.