This colour word is common in Homer and other poetry. It refers to true black, of night (cf. kappa 1287) and the colour of men (i.e. the Ethiopians; cf. (?)Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 807 and scholia), animals (e.g. Mycenaean ke-ra-no of a horse or bull) and fish (Oppian), but also (cf. scholion on Homer, Iliad 9.6, me/lan h)\ fobero/n or frikto/n) to dark, murky or ominous things: the earth, Hades, the depths of the sea, storm clouds (cf. kappa 1284), the river Danube (Lycophron, Alexandra 1336), waves, and blood (cf. kappa 1285), especially, but not only, when issuing from a wound. The heart of a man may be kelaino/n (Hesiod, Shield 429), or his spirit kelainw/pan (of Odysseus, Sophocles, Ajax 955, cf. kappa 1288), cf. kelaino/frwn, spoken by Orestes of his mother (Aeschylus, Eumenides 459).