In Emacs 21.1 and later,
colors and faces are supported in non-windowed mode, i.e. on Unix
and GNU/Linux text-only terminals and consoles, and when invoked
as ‘emacs -nw’
on X, and MS-Windows. (Colors and faces were supported in the
MS-DOS port since Emacs 19.29.) Emacs automatically detects color
support at startup and uses it if available. If you think that
your terminal supports colors, but Emacs won't use them, check
the termcap entry for your display type for
color-related capabilities.
The command M-x list-colors-display pops up a window which exhibits all the colors Emacs knows about on the current display.
Syntax highlighting is on by default since version 22.1.