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

THE LINEN MANUFACTURE. 383
for its fineness and softness* ; but the raw material was in all
probability imported.
" Flax," observes Professor Miiller, " was grown and manu-
factured in Southern Etruria from ancient times, and thus the
Tarquinii were enabled to furnish sail-cloth for the fleet of
Scipio : yarn for making nets was produced on the banks of
the Tiber, and fine linen for clothing in Faleriit." This ac-
count agrees remarkably with the views of Micali, and those
historians who maintain the Egyptian origin of the Etrurians.
Pliny (xix. 1, 2.) mentions various kinds of flax of superior
excellence, which were produced in the plains of the Po and
Ticino ; in the country of the Peligni (in Picenum) ; and about
Cumae in Campaniat No flax, he says, was whiter or more
like wool than that of the Peligni.
In the next chapter Pliny gives an account of the mode of
preparing flax ; plucking it up by the roots, tying it into bun-
dles, drying it in the sun, steeping, drying again, beating it with
a mallet on a stone, and lastly hackhng it, or, as he says,
" combing it with iron hooks^ This may be compared with
the preceding extract from Colonel Leake's Journal, and with
chapter 97 of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De Proprietabus Rerum,
which is perhaps partly copied from Pliny and treats of the
manufacture of flax, steeping it in water, &c., and of its use
for clothes, nets, sails, thread, and curtains.
In Spain there was a manufacture of linen at Emporium,
which lay on the Mediterranean not far from the Pyrenees §.
According to Pliny {I. c.) remarkably beautiful flax was produ-
ced in Hispania Citerior near Tarraco. He ascribes its splendor
to the virtues of the river-water flowing near Tarraco, in which
the flax was steeped and prepared. Still further southward on
the same coast we find Setabis, the modern Xativa, which is
celebrated by various authors for the beauty of its linen, and
especially for hnen sudaria, or handkerchiefs :
* Diod. Sic. 1. V. 12. torn. i. p. 339. ed. Wesseling.
t Etrusker. vol. i. p. 235, 236.
t Probably CumiE is intended by Gratiiis Faliscus in the expreosion " .£oIis
de valla Sibyillae."
—
Cyneg. 35.
§ Strabo, 1. iii. cap. 4. vol. i. p. 428. ed. Siebenkees.