Adam Roberts går igenom några förklaringar till varför Homeros kallar havet för "vinmörkt" (οἶνοψ πόντος). Han kallar en av dem för tråkig och därför troligen korrekt, men jag tyckte det var något poetiskt över den här "verbala fossilen":
It is that the epithet is a kind of verbal fossil, and not an attempt to connect a particular vinous colour with any actual sea. The argument here is that οἶνοψ derives from an older word in pre-Hellenic, Mycenaen Greek: the Linear B: 𐀺𐀜𐀦𐀰 (pronounced, it seems, wo-no-ko-so) and 𐀺𐀜𐀦𐀰𐀤 (wo-no-ko-so-ke), which was the name of a sacred bull, and was perhaps connected to the use of a particular type of vessel, shaped like a bullshead, in which ritual wine would be served during a religious ceremony. According to this theory ‘wine-dark sea’ is a kind of holdover, a buried reference to a lost sacrament in which the wine of the red-hide bull, as red as it, was imbibed from a sacred beaker.