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

FITNESS OF THE MALLOW FOR MAKING CLOTH. 199
tbiough more than ten lines, of all the persons concerned in
the manufacture or sale of garments.
Solearii astant, astant molochineirii.
All the lexicographers and commentators explain Blolochi-
narius to be one who dyes cloth of the color of the mallow.
Lanarius was a woollen-draper ; Coactiliariiis, a dealer in
felts, a hatter ; Lintearius a Unen-draper ; and Sericarius a
silk-mercer. According to the same analogy, Molochinarius
would mean a dealer in Molochma, i. e. in all hinds of cloth
made from mallows.
The class of writers, which will now be produced as afford-
ing testimony respecting the use of the mallow for weaving,
are Greek authors, and who instead of the common Greek
terms employ the Attic term Ajiopyo; and its derivatives.
'Xfiopyoi has been explained by some of the lexicographers
to be a kind of flax (See JuUus Pollux, L. vii. § 74.). Perhaps
by this explanation nothing more was intended than that it
was a plant, the fibres of which were used to spin and weave
into cloth. It is highly probable that it was the Malva Silves-
tris or Common Blallow, and that it was called 'Ajxopyds.
According to the Attic lexicons of Pausanias {apud Eustath.
I. c.) and of Moeris, 'A/.opyof was an Attic term. We now find
traces of it in seven Attic writers, four or five of whom wrote
comedy. These are Aristophanes, Cratmus, Antiphanes, Eu-
polis, Clearchus, jEschines, and Plato.
I. We shall take first Aristophanes, whose comedy called
Lysistrata is frequently quoted by Pausanias and Cratinus, and
being still extant throws considerable light upon the subject. It
was represented in the year 412. B. C. Lysistrata says {L
150),
Kijiv ToT; ^iTuvioiai To7i d^Spyivoti
LV)iva\ naptoificv,
" And if we should present ourselves naked in shifts of amor-
gos ;" showing that these shifts were transparent. Accordingly
Moeris says, that the dfidpytvov was Xtvrdv v^nc/xa, " a thin web." Bi-
setus in his Greek commentary on this play, after quoting the
explanations of Stephanus Byzantinus, Suidas, Eustathius,