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

388 CULTIVATION AND USES OF
horses, which drag the boats upon the Danube between Pest
and Vienna, now wear coarse tunics of heinj)*.
Ammianus Marcellinus (xxxi. 2. p. 474.), speaking of the
Huns, who hved beyond the Palus Masotis, says,
They cover themselves with tunics made of linen, or of the skins of tcild mice
sewed together.
These timics, though called " Kntea," may have been the
hempen garments, which, according to Herodotus, were scarce
to be distinguished from hnen.
The next writer, who mentions hemp after Herodotus, is
Moschion, rather more than 200 years B. C. He statest, that
the magnificent ship Syracusia, built by the command of Hiero
II., was provided with hemp from the Rlione for making ropes.
The common materials for such purposes were the JEgi/ptia?i
Papyrus, the bark of the Lime-tree, of the Hemp-leaved
Mallow, and of the Spanish and Portugal Broom, and
probably also the Stipa Tenacissima of Linnseus.
Hemp, as well as flax, was grown abundantly in Colchist
It was brought to the ports of the jEgean Sea by the Ionian
merchants, who were intimately connected with the northern
and eastern coasts of the Euxine through the medium of the
Milesian colonies. This fact may account for the cultivation of
hemp in Caria. The best was obtained in the time of Pliny
(Z. xix. c. 9.) from Alabanda and Mylasainthat country. Phny
also mentions a kind, which grew in the country of the Sabines,
and which was remarkable for its height.
Automedon, who lived a httle before PHny, complains in an
Epigram of a bad dinner given him by one of his acquaintances,
and compares the tall stringy caljbages to hemp§. As this
author was a native of Cyzicus, he would probably have abun-
dant opportunities of becoming famihar with the plant.
In the time of Pausanias hemp was grown in Elis. See his
Eliaca, c. 26. § 4.
* Travels in Circassia, &c., by Edmund Spencer, 1837, vol. i. p. 13.
t Apud AthenEBum, 1. v. p. 206. Casaub.
t Strabo, 1. xi. § 17. vol. iv. p. 402, ed. Siebenkees.
§ Kavva Pivn- Brunck's Analecta, ii. 209.