Did they even know what it was? I'm not a Greek historian, however there are a lot of smart people here on DU. Probably someone here knows whether a rainbow is ever mentioned in ancient Greek writings. If so, they probably did see the full color spectrum, they just described certain colors differently than we do. Don't forget that the Greek flag was created in a light baby blue. Why would they do that if they couldn't see blue?
Since my career is in printing and graphic design, I can say that certain ink colors were very rare until the late middle ages or even up to the modern era. Some colors were impossible to manufacture without a great deal of cost. For example, the color purple comes to mind. Only royals were ever clothed in purple because of the difficulty and cost involved in creating that color ink on cloth or on paper. It doesn't mean that people couldn't see purple - they could. It was just a rare and precious commodity, not to be wasted on common folks.
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