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Chinese;[1] 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.[2] 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 Phœnician women, and the precious materials were multiplied by a looser texture and the intermixture of linen threads.[3] Two hundred years after the age of Pliny, the use of pure or even of mixed silks was confined to the female sex, till the opulent citizens of Rome and the provinces were insensibly familiarized with the example of Elagabalus, the first who, by this effeminate habit, had sullied the dignity of an emperor and a man. Aurelian complained that a pound of silk was sold at Rome for twelve ounces of gold; but the supply increased with the demand, and the price diminished with the supply. If accident or monopoly sometimes raised the value even above the
- ↑ Georgic. ii. 121 [cp. Claudian, Prob. et Olyb. 179]. Serica quando venerint in usum planissime non scio: suspicor tamen in Julii Cæsaris ævo, nam ante non invenio, says Justus Lipsius (Excursus. i. ad Tacit. Annal. ii. 32). See Dion Cassius (l. xliii. p. 358. edit. Reimar), and Pausanias (l. vi. p. 519), the first who describes, however strangely, the Seric insect. [For the silk trade see Pardessus, Mémoire sur le commerce de soie chez les anciens, in Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions, 1842; F. Hirth, China and the Roman Orient, 1885 (see Appendix 12); for the mulberry-tree, see Hehn, Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere, p. 336 sqq.]
- ↑ Tam longinquo orbe petitur, ut in publico matrona transluceat ... ut denudet 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. Athenasus, iv. 3.]
- ↑ On the texture, colours, names, and use of the silk, half silk, and linen garments 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 for the unravelling and reweaving in Syria of woven silks imported from China is Pliny (in the passages cited in the last note). The statement has been regarded by some as a figment, but F. Hirth (op. cit.) has shown that it is confirmed in a striking way by Chinese authorities: by the Wei-lio (compiled before A. D. 429) and in the Encyclopædia of Ma Tuan-lin. The former says: "They [the inhabitants of the Roman Orient, esp. Syria] were always anxious to get Chinese silk for severing it in order to make hu-ling [damask, gauze, Coan transparencies?], for which reason they frequently trade by sea with the countries of An-hsi (Parthia)". Hirth's translation, p. 72. Cp. p. 257-8. Pardessus takes the same view of the passages in Pliny [op. cit. p. 14, 15).]
