The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous ... - Cd3wd.com

AFTER ITS FIRST INTRODUCTION INTO EUROPE. 71
middle of the sixth century, together with subsequent wars, had
greatly interrupted the caravan trade between China and
Persia. On the return of peace, the Sogdians, an Asiatic peo-
ple, who had the greatest interest in the revival of the trade,
persuaded the Turkish sovereign, whose subjects they were be-
come, to send an embassy to Chosroes, king of Persia, to open
a negotiation for this purpose. Maniak, a Sogdian prince, who
was ambassador, being instructed to request that the Sogdians
might be allowed to supply the Persians with silk ; presented
himself before the Persian jnonarch in the double character of
merchanjL and envoy, carrying with him many bales of silken
merchandise, for which he hoped to find purchasers among the
Persians. But Chosroes, who thought the conveyance by sea
to the Persian Gulf more advantageous to his subjects than this
proposed ti"affic, was not disposed to lend a favorable ear to the
legation, and rather uncourteously showed his contempt for the
Sogdian traders. He bought up all the silk which the ambas-
sador had carried with him, and immediately burned it before
them ; thus giving the most convincing proof of the Little value
which it had in his estimation.
After this the Persians and Chinese united against the Turks,
who, to strengthen themselves, sought an alliance with the
Emperor Justin. Maniak was again appointed ambassador,
and sent to negotiate the terms of the alliance ; but disappoint-
ment, though from a dissimilar cause, attended this his second
embassy. The sight of silk-worms, and the establishment for
manufacturing their produce, in Constantinople, were to him as
unwelcome as unexpected ;
he however concealed his mortifica-
tion, and, with perhaps an overstrained civility, acknowledged,
that the Romans were already become as expert as the Chinese
in both the management of silk-worms and manufacture of
their silk* ; and when in the fourth year of Justin II. {i. e. A. D.
569.) they went on the same mission to Byzantium, they found
that here also there was no demand, since silk-worms were
bred there already. Soon after this we learn that the Byzantines
sent an embassy to Disabul, King of the Sogdiani, who
* Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. xlii.