[Vocabulary] draw the colour

[sherishine]

And Madox returned to the village of Marston Magna, Somerset, where he had been born, and a month later sat in the congregation of a church, heard the sermon in honour of war, pulled out his desert revolver and shot himself.


I, Herodotus of Halicarnassus, set forth my history, that time may not draw the colour from what Man has brought into being, nor those great and wonderful deeds manifested by both Greeks and Barbarians... together with the reason they fought one another.


Men had always been the reciters of poetry in the desert. And Madox—to the Geographical Society—had spoken beautiful accounts of our traversals and coursings. Bermann blew theory into the embers. And I? I was the skill among them. The mechanic. The others wrote out their love of solitude and meditated on what they found there. They were never sure of what I thought of it all. “Do you like that moon?” Madox asked me after he’d known me for ten years. He asked it tentatively, as if he had breached an intimacy. For them I was a bit too cunning to be a lover of the desert. More like Odysseus. Still, I was. Show
me a desert, as you would show another man a river, or another man the metropolis of his childhood.
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The above is from the English Patient.


:?:
Here my question is , what does Herodotus' words mean?
Does "draw the color" mean "draw the color line"?

 

[stanislaw.masny]

Hi, sherishine.
I don't know neither a novel 'The English Patient' by Michael Ondaatje nor a drama film based on the novel.
Herodotus of Halicarnassus, Greek historian who lived in the 5th century BC or in the beginning of Warring States Period in Chinese history was called the Father of the History. His reports about Greek events are often colored by Athenian bias against rival states - Thebes and Corinth in particular.
Have a good day.
S.M.

 

[sherishine]

:up:Thank you for your thread! Every word counts:）
May be the key to this problem is whether we know the book of Herodotus well
O(∩_∩)O~

 

[Tdol]

If time draws the colour, then the events will lose their vitality and interest, so the history will 'keep them alive' and vivid. (I interpret Draw here as meaning extract/remove)