Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/93

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 73 Lisbon, were famous for the manufacture, the use, and perhaps the exportation of silk. It was first introduced into Sicily by traniported the Normans : and this emigration of trade distinguishes the to itaiy"** victory of Roger from the uniform and fruitless hostilities of ever}' age. After the sack of Corinth, Athens, and Thebes, his lieutenant embarked with a captive train of weavers and arti- ficers of both sexes, a trophy glorious to their master and dis- graceful to the Greek emperor.'-- The king of Italy was not insensible of the value of the present ; and, in the restitution of the prisoners, he exempted only the male and female manu- facturers of Thebes and Corinth, who labour, says the Byamtine historian, under a barbarous lord, like the old Eretrians in the service of Darius.-' A stately edifice, in the palace of Palermo, was erected for the use of this industrious colony ; -^ and the art was propagated by their children and disciples to satisfy the increasing demand of the western world. The decay of the looms of Sicily may be ascribed to the troubles of the island and the competition of the Italian cities. In the year thirteen hundred and fourteen, Lucca alone, among her sister republics, enjoyed the lucrative monopolv.-^ A domestic revo- lution dispersed the manufactures of Florence, Bologna, Venice, Milan, and even the countries beyond the Alps ; and, thirteen years after this event, the statutes of Modena enjoin the plant- ^Inde ad interiora Grseciae progressi. Corinthum, Thebas, Athenas, antiqiia nobilitate celebres, expugnant ; et, maxima ibidem prasda direpta, opifices etiam, qui sericos pannos texere solent, ob ignominiam Imp)eratoris illius suique principis gloriam captivos deducunt. Quos Rogerius, in Palermo Sicilias raetrofjoli collocans, artem texendi suos edocere prsecepit ; et exhinc prasdicta ars ilia, prius a Gnecis tantum inter Christianos habita, Romanis patere ccepit ingeniis (Otho Frisingen. de Gestis Frederici I. 1. i. c. 33, in Muratori, Script. Ital. torn. vi. p. 668). This exception allows the bishop to celebrate Lisbon andAlmeria insericorum pannoruni opificio prasnobilissimx (in Chron. apud Muratori, Annali d'ltalia, tom. ix. p. 415). [On the manufacture of silk and the regulation of the silk trade and guilds of silk merchants at Constantinople, much light is thrown by the so-called "E-np^ir^t- PifixCoy, or Book of the Prefect of the City — an Imjjerial Edict published by "SI. Jules Nicole of Geneva in 1893, and attributed by him, without sufficient proof, to Leo VL Cp. sects, iv.-viii. We find distinguished the vestiopratai who sold silk dresses ; the prandiopratai who sold dresses imported from Syria or Cilicia ; the metaxopratai, silk merchants ; the katartarioi, silk manufacturers ; and serikarioi, silk weavers. ] 23 Nicetas in Manuel, 1. ii. c. 8, p. 65. He describes these Greeks as skilled euijTptov? oBovas v^aivn-v, aS ttrroi T7po'7(xi'eovrn.^ rCyv c^a^tTwr icat xox'^OTaiTtav tjroKiov, ^ Hugo Falcandus styles them nobiles officinas. The Arabs had not introduced silk, though they had planted canes and made sugar in the plain of Palermo. ^ See the Life of Castruccio Casticani, not by Machiavel, but by his more authentic biographer Nicholas Tegrimi. Muratori, who has inserted it in the xith volume of his .Scriptores, quotes this curious passage in his Italian An- tiquities (tom. i. dissert. xv. p. 37S).