244 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap. XL from whence a worm emerges in the form of a butterfly. Till the reign of Justinian, the silk-worms who feed on the leaves of the white mulberry-tree were confined to China ; those of the pine, the oak, and the ash, were common in the forests both of Asia and Europe ; but, as their education is more difficult and their produce more uncertain, they were generally neglected, except in the little island of Ceos, near the coast of Attica. A thin gauze was procured from their webs, and this Cean manufacture, the invention of a woman, for female use, was long admired both in the East and at Rome. Whatever suspicions may be raised by the garments of the Medes and Assyrians, Virgil is the most ancient writer who expressly mentions the soft wool which was combed from the trees of the Seres or Chinese ; 63 and this natural error, less marvellous than the truth, was slowly corrected by the knowledge of a valuable insect, the first artificer of the luxury of nations. That rare and elegant luxury was censured, in the reign of Tiberius, by the gravest of the Romans ; and Pliny, in affected though forcible language, has condemned the thirst of gain, which explored the last confines of the earth for the pernicious purpose of exposing to the public eye naked draperies and transparent matrons. 64 A dress which shewed the turn of the limbs and colour of the skin might gratify vanity or provoke desire ; the silks which had been closely woven in China were sometimes unravelled by the Phoenician women, and the precious materials were multiplied by a looser texture and the inter- mixture of linen threads. 65 Two hundred years after the age 63 Georgic. ii. 121 [cp. Claudian, Prob. et Olyb. 179]. Serica quando venerint in usum planissime non scio : suspicor tamen in Julii Caesaris sevo, nam ante non invenio, says Justus Lipsius (Excursus i. ad Tacit. Annal. ii. 32). See Dion Cassius (1. xliii. p. 358, edit. Beimar), and Pausanias (1. vi. p. 519), the first who describes, however strangely, the Seric insect. [For the silk trade see Pardessus, Memoire sur le commerce de soie chez les anciens, in M^moires de PAoademie des Inscriptions, 1842 ; Zacharia von Lingenthal, Eine Verordnung Justinians fiber den Seiden- handel, in Memoires de l'Academie St. Petersburg, s6r. vii., vol. ix., 6 ; F. Hirth, China and the Boman Orient, 1885 (see Appendix 12) ; for the mulberry-tree, see Hehn, Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere, p. 336 sqq.] 64 Tarn longinquo orbe petitur, ut in publico matrona transluceat . . . ut denu- det feminas vestis (Plin. vi. 20, xi. 21). Varro and Publius Syrus had already played on the Toga vitrea, ventus textilis, and nebula linea (Horat. Sermon, i. 2, 101, with the notes of Torrentius and Dacier). [Cp. Athensus, iv. 3.] 68 On the texture, colours, names, and use of the silk, half silk, and linen gar- ments of antiquity, see the profound, diffuse, and obscure researches of the great Salmasius (in Hist. August, p. 127, 309, 310, 339, 341, 342, 344, 388-391, 395, 513), who was ignorant of the most common trades of Dijon or Leyden. [The authority
