By means of an analysis of all passages containing divisio and color the rhetorical system behind these terms as well as its presumed origin will be reconstructed. In Seneca’s works, color has nothing to do with “embellishment” or “interpretation of facts”, which will not prevail in the rhetoric field until later; nor does the term color originally come from the theory of status/stasis, with which it was associated only secondarily. In the works of Seneca and the declaimers to whom he refers, color represents all those facts invented by the declaimer which are not part of the proposed topic, but do not interfere with it either: motives, character traits, oratio figurata or background stories. Therefore, it is clear how to explain the origin of this metaphor: the color colours the sketch, i. e. the outline given by the thema.The divisio, the plan for the whole controversia, incorporates the quaestiones iuris and the aequitatis tractatio; the quaestiones iuris deal with the question whether an action is legal or not, the quaestiones aequitatis inquire into the question of what had to be done (aequitas). It is obvious that the divisio constitutes an older system than the theory of the status. In the course of time the system of the status absorbs, so to say, the system of the quaestiones. Thereby, the conjunction between the divisio and the colores is of utmost importance: the function of the divisio is to choose the adequate color.