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

326 THE COTTON MANUFACTURE.
Tenuai non ilium candentis carbasa lini,
Non auro depicta chlamys, non flava galeri
Caesaries, pictoque juvant subtemine braccte. vi. 228.
No aid to him his chalmys white as snow,
Muslin with gold enrich'd, his yellow curls
Of artificial hair, a.ud figured pantaloons.
(See Part 1, chap. iii. p. 59.)
Also Prudentius, the Christian poet (See Part 1, chap. iii. p.
59.), in an elaborate account of Pride, depicts her in a garment
of the same kind :
Carbasea ex humeris summo collecta coibat
Palla sinu, teretem nectens a pectore nodum.
A muslin kerchief by a knot compress'd,
—
Pass'd o'er her shoulders, and adorn'd her breast.
Psychom. 186.
Tanta, tamque multiplici fertilitate abundat rerum omnium Cyprus, ut nullius
externi indigens adminiculi, indigenis viribus, a fundamento ipso cariuae ad supre-
mos usque carbasos aedificet onerarium navem, omnibusque armamentis instructam
mari committat.
—
Amm. Marcellinus, xiv. 8.
Apuleius mentions carbasina in conjunction with homhycina
and other kinds of cloth*. He may consequently be presumed
to use the word in its proper sense, to wit, as denoting calico or
muslin. In the same manner cotton is distinguished from silk
by Sidonius Apollinarist. Also we may presume that cotton
and not linen sails are to be understood in the following line of
Avienus
:
Si tamen in Boream flectantur carbasa cymbae.
Descr. Orbis, 799.
Here the writer not only professes to give geographical informa-
tion, but he is describing the Indian seas and islands ; and as
in the present day, so also in ancient times, the sails used in the
navigation of those seas were probably made of cotton.
Strabo uses the word Kapixaaivai in describing the official dress of
a certain class of priestesses among the Cimbrit Although it
* Metamorphoseon 1. viii. p. 579, 580. ed. Oudendorpii. (Quoted in Part
First, Chapter ii. p. 35.)
t L. ii. Epist. 2. (Quoted in Part First, Chapter iii. p. 61.).
\ L. vii. cap. 2. § 3. p. 336. ed. Siebenkees.