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

PASTORAL LIFE OF THE ANCIENTS. 235
ed. Bip.) mentions the wool of Laodicea (See Appendix A.) in
Caria; and Strabo (xii. c. 7. p. 578. Casaub.) observes, that
the country about this city and Colossae, which was not far from
it, produced sheep highly valued on account of the fineness and
the color of their fleeces.
Aristophanes mentions a pall, made " of Phrygian fleeces* :"
and Varro asserts, that in his time there were many flocks of
wild sheep in Phrygiat.
The passages above quoted from Strabo and Joannes Tzetzes
allude to the very great celebrity of the wool of Miletus and
of the articles woven from it.
The passages, which will now be produced from both Greek
and Latin authors of various ages, conspire to prove the distinguished
excellence of the wool of Miletus, although in many
of them the epithet Milesian may be employed only in a proverbial
acceptation to denote wool of the finest quality. The
animals, which yielded this wool, must have been bred in the
interior of Ionia not far from Miletus.
Ctesias describes the softness of camels'-hair by comparing it
to Milesian fleecest A woman in Aristophanes (Lysist. 732.)
says, she must go home to spread her Milesian fleeces on the
couch, because the worms were gnawing them. In a fragment
of a Greek comedy, called Procris, of a somewhat later age
(ap. Athen. 1. xii. p. 553), a favorite lap-dog is described, lying
on Milesian fleeces
;
QvKOvv v7ro(TTopuTe naXaKus tu kvvi'
'Epton'.
Therefore make a soft bed for the dog: throw down for him Milesian fleeces.
The Sybarites wore shaivls of Milesian wool§. Palaephatus
explains the fable of the Hesperides by saying, that their father
Hesperus was a Milesian, and that they had beautiful sheep,
such as those which were still kept at Miletusll. Eustathius
says, the " Milesian carpets^^'' had become proverbial. Virgil
* Aves, 492. t De Re Rusticfl, ii. 1.
X Ctesise fragmenta, a Biihr, p. 224.
§ TimcBus apud Athenajuni, xii. p. 519. B. 1| De Incred. § 19.
T la Dionysium, v. 823.