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

28 CULTIVATION AND MANUFACTURE OP
at an enormous price from nations, to which our commerce has not yet extended,
in order that our matrons may display their persons to the public no less than to
adulterers in their chamber I—Yates's Translation.
The Seres must be supposed to have dwelt somewhere in the
centre of Asia. Perhaps those geographers who represent Lit-
tle Bucharia as their country*, are nearest the truth, and thus
far neither Greeks nor Romans had penetrated. Silk was
brought to them " from nations, to which even their commerce
had not yet extended."' Hence their inaccurate ideas respecting
its originf.
SENECA, THE TRAGEDIAN.
Nee MtBonia, distinguit acu,
Quae Phoebeis subditus Euris
Legit Eois Ser arboribus.
Here. CEtaus, 664.
Nor with Mteonian needle marks the web,
Gather'd by Eastern Seres from the trees.
Seres, illustrious for their fleece.
Thyestes, 378.
Remove, ye maids, the vests, whose tissue glares
With purple and with gold ; far be the red
Of Tyrian murex, and the shining thread,
Which furthest Seres gather from the boughs.
Hyppolitus, 386. (Phadra loquitur.)
At a very early period the art of dyeing had been earned to
a very great degree of perfection in Phoenicia. The method
of dyeing woollen cloths purple was, it is said, first discovered at
Tyre. This color, the most celebrated among the ancients,
appears to have been brought to a degree of excellence, of
which we can form but a very faint idea
* The position of Serica is discussed by Latreille in his paper hereafter cited.
See also Mannert. iv. 6. 6, 7. Brotier, Mem. de I'Acad. des Inscrip. torn. 46.
John Reinhold Forster {De Bysso, p. 20, 21.) thinks that Little Bucharia was
certainly the ancient Serica. Sir John Barrow {Travels in China, p. 435-438.)
thinks the Seres were not the Chinese.
t The first author who speaks of the Seres as a distinct nation, is Mela, iii. 7.
He describes them as a very honest people, who brought what tliey had to sell,
laid it down and went away, and then returned for the price of it. The same
account is given by Eustathius, on Dyonisius, 1. 752. p. 242, Bemhardy.
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