Tyrian purple was continued in use by the emperors of the Eastern Roman Empire until its final collapse in 1453. The badge of office of a Roman Senator was a stripe of Tyrian purple on his white toga. The imperial robes of Roman emperors were of Tyrian purple trimmed in metallic gold thread. Alexander the Great, when giving imperial audiences as the emperor of Macedonia the emperor of the Seleucid Empire and the kings of Ptolemaic Egypt all wore Tyrian purple. Tyrian purple may have been discovered as early as during the Minoan civilization. Therefore, Tyrian purple was also denominated 'imperial purple'. Purpura is the color of a dye extracted from a mollusk found on the shores of the city of Tyre in ancient Phoenicia (contemporarily in Lebanon), which color in classical antiquity was a symbol of royalty and political authority because only the very wealthy could afford it, including the Roman Emperors. The English name 'purple' itself originally denominated the specific color purpura. Other contemporary English names for purpura are 'imperial purple' and 'royal purple'. ' Tyrian purple' is the contemporary English name of the color that in Latin is denominated ' purpura'. See also under Purple#In art, history and fashion the section 'In prehistory and the ancient world: Tyrian purple' Byzantine Emperor Justinian I clad in Tyrian purple 6th-century mosaic in the Basilica of San Vitale Tyrian Purple Historical development of purple Tyrian purple: Classical antiquity The first recorded use of purple as a color name in English was in 975 AD.

In formal color theory, purple colors often refer to the colors on the line of purples on the CIE chromaticity diagram (or colors that can be derived from colors on the line of purples), i.e., any color between red and violet, not including either red or violet themselves. Since this Wikipedia page contains contributions from authors from different countries and different native languages, this Wikipedia page is likely not to be consistent in the use of the color terms purple and violet.

The confusion about the range of meanings of the terms violet and purple is even larger when including other languages and historical texts. The full range of colors between red and blue is referred to by the term purple in some British authoritative texts, whereas the same range of colors is referred to by the term violet in some other texts. Many native speakers of English in the United States refer to the blue-dominated spectral color beyond blue as purple, but the same color is referred to as violet by many native English speakers in the United Kingdom. There is confusion about the meaning of the terms purple and violet even among native speakers of English. However, the meaning of the term purple is not well defined. In common English usage, purple is a range of hues of color occurring between red and blue. There are numerous variations of the color purple, a sampling of which is shown below. Royalty, nobility, Lent, Easter, Mardi Gras, LGBT, magic, Spirit Day This article is about shades of the color.

Amethyst purple ink