The importance of scarlet to ancient rome

[Yakman]

And that's why I started this thread, if the whore of babylon is ancient rome then the colors scarlet and purple must have significance to ancient rome (in revelation 17 the whore is described as wearing the colors scarlet and purple) I knew purple was what the ruling class wore in ancient rome, but scarlets significance was unclear to me

scarlet dye was very expensive. one of the big pickups the spanish got when they won mexico was a good source of red dye.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochineal#Dye

purple dye was also expensive, and in rome, was reserved for the senate/emperor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple

 

[Henry IX]

The are two basic requirements for dying cloth - a dye that can stain the cloth a colour and a mordant that stops the dye from washing out. The cost of a given colour of dye is related to the interplay of the cost of the dye, the cost of the mordant and the 'fastness' of the dye-mordant combination. Tyrian purple was notorious for not being fast - it faded after a single wash of two. Hence it was staggeringly expensive because the dye itself was hugely expensive and the garment had to be repeatedly re-dyed.

Reds, by contrast were very expensive dyes but they were much faster with the correct mordants. Hence, it was expensive to dye cloth bright red (as opposed to pink, which was easy) but once it was dyed it did not require frequent re-dying. As such bright reds were expensive, and were used as signals of rank, but not in the same league as purple.