The statuary and architecture of ancient Greece and Rome has inspired us for centuries. Our own nation’s capital, with all its gleaming white marble, is a tribute to what we suppose an ancient city of grandeur ought to look like. And while it is true that many buildings in Rome did employ white Luna marble and the creamier yellow kind from Numidia, the cities and statuary were generally a riot of color.

How do we know? Fragments of paint and pigment left on statues and found in archeological digs tell us so. But I’ve never seen it actually rendered as vividly as in the series of photos discussed in this article.

The colors and patterns that ultra violet light reveals might be considered “tacky” as the article observes, but it seems to me that the ancients were expressing their own version of bringing the past to life. We use color photographs to record the present, and resort to bold cinematic reproductions to explore the past. We do this because life is full of color, and we want to make everything as real as possible. It seems that with the limited technology available to them, the ancients wanted to do the same.