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

30 CULTIVATION AND MANUFACTURE OP
With winding trails of various silks were made,
Whose branching gold set off the rich brocade.
Ibid.
With this description we compare that of Seneca, which rep-
resents silk as embroidered in Asia Minor, with the " Maeonian
needle."
PLINY
speaks copiously and repeatedly of the manufacture of silk.
Nevertheless we learn from him scarce anything, which we did
not know from the earlier authorities. His accounts are taken
from Aristotle, from Varro, and probably also from persons who
accompanied the Parthian expeditions, or who engaged in the
trade with inner Asia. But according to his usual manner,
when he speaks of what he has not himself seen, he confounds
accounts from different witnesses, which are inconsistent with
one another. He asserts that the bombyx was a native of Cos
but it is not probable that the women of that island would, in
sucli case, have recourse to the laborious operation of convert-
ing foreign finished goods into threads for their own weaving.
It is, therefore, only reasonable to suppose, that whatever man-
ufacture was carried on from the raw material, was, like that
of Tyre or Berytus, composed of unwrought silk imported from
the East. It is mentioned both by Theophanes and Zonares,
the Byzantine historians, that before silk-worms were brought to
Constantinople in the middle of the sixth century, no person in
that capital knew that silk was produced by a worm; a toler-
ably strong evidence that none were reared so near to Constan-
tinople as Cos.
Pliny's account of the Coan bombyx is evidently a cloud of
fable and absurdit}^, in which, however, we may discern a few
lines of truth, probably derived from the accounts of the silkworm
of the Seres.
JOSEPHUS
says, that the emperors Titus and Vespasian wore silk dresses*,
when they celebrated at Rome their triumph over the Jews.
* De Bello Jud. vii. 5. 4.
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