Page:1909historyofdec04gibbuoft.djvu/285

 Chap. XL] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 243 humble practice of the arts; society was enriched by the divi- sion of labour and the facility of exchange; and every Roman was lodged, clothed, and subsisted, by the industry of a thousand hands. The invention of the loom and distaff has been piously ascribed to the gods. In every age, a variety of animal and vegetable productions, hair, skins, wool, flax, cotton, and at length silk, have been skilfully manufactured to hide or adorn the human body; they were stained with an infusion of per- manent colours; and the pencil was successfully employed to improve the labours of the loom. In the choice of those colours 59 which imitate the beauties of nature, the freedom of taste and fashion was indulged ; but the deep purple 60 which the Phoeni- cians extracted from a shell-fish was restrained to the sacred person and palace of the emperor ; and the penalties of treason were denounced against the ambitious subjects who dared to usurp the prerogative of the throne. 61 I need not explain that silk 62 is originally spun from the The use of bowels of a caterpillar, and that it composes the golden tomb Romans Ba See in Ovid (de Arte Amandi, iii. 269, &c.) a poetical list of twelve colours borrowed from flowers, the elements, &e.' But it is almost impossible to discrimi- nate by words all the nice and various shades both of art and nature. 60 By the discovery of Cochineal, &c. we far surpass the colours of antiquity. Their royal purple had a strong smell, and a dark cast as deep aB bull's blood — obscuritas rubens (says Cassiodorius, Var. 1, 2), nigredo sanguinea. The president Goguet (Origine des Loix et des Arts, part ii. 1. ii. c. 2, p. 184-215) will amuse and satisfy the reader. I doubt whether his book, especially in England, is as well known as it deserves to be. 61 Historical proofs of this jealousy have been occasionally introduced, and many more might have been added ; but the arbitrary acts of despotism were justified by the sober and general declarations of law (Codex Theodosian. 1. x. tit. 21, leg. 3. Codex Justinian. 1. xi. tit. 8, leg. 5). An inglorious permission, and necessary re- striction, was applied to the mimae, the female dancers (Cod. Theodos. 1. xv. tit. 7, leg. 11). 62 In the history of insects (far more wonderful than Ovid's Metamorphoses) the silk-worm holds a conspicuous place. The bombyx of the isle of Ceos, as described by Pliny (Hist. Natur. xi. 26, 27, with the notes of the two learned Jesuits, Har- douin and Brotier), may be illustrated by a similar species in China (MemoireB sur les Chinois, torn. ii. p. 575-598) ; but our silk-worm, as well as the white mulberry- tree, were unknown to Theophrastus and Pliny. [Here the author has curiously confused Ceos with Cos. The earliest notice of the silk-worm is in Aristotle, Hist. Animal., 5, 19 : 4k Se ro6rov rod £d>ov /col ra fiofxfrvKta avaAvovcri rosy ywa.iK.Giv rivls ava.ir7)vi^6fjLivai Kairetra vtyaivovaiv. The early Chinese Chronicle Hou-han-shu, which was partly written during the 5th cent. a.d. and covers the period a.d. 25 to 220, states that in Ta-tsin (the eastern part of the Eoman empire) the people " practise the planting of trees and the rearing of silk-worms " (Hirth, China and the Eoman Orient, p. 40). In a later work, the Wei-shu, contemporary with Justinian, mul- berry-trees are specified in a proximity which is perhaps significant. " The country produces all kinds of grain, the mulberry-tree and hemp. The inhabitants busy themselves with silk-worms and fields " (Hirth, ib. p. 50).]