Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/276

 merely afforded employment to many persons in Constantinople, but to a still greater number in Corinth, Thebes, and Argos. Moreover, from the reign of Justinian to the twelfth century, Greece was the only country in Christendom possessing silkworms, or workmen familiar with the art of preparing their produce.

Gibbon describes the manufactures of Greece, during the period of Constantinople's greatest prosperity, as unequalled in elegance and fineness by any similar manufactures of either ancient or modern times. "The gifts," he states, "which a rich and generous matron of Peloponnesus presented to the Emperor Basil, her adopted son, were doubtless fabricated in the Grecian looms. Danielis bestowed a carpet of fine wool, of a pattern which imitated the spots of a peacock's tail, of a magnitude to overspread the floor of a new church, erected in the triple names of Christ, of Michael the Archangel, and of the prophet Elijah. She gave six hundred pieces of silk and linen of various use and denomination; the silk was painted with the Tyrian die, and adorned by the labours of the needle; and the linen was so exquisitely fine, that an entire piece might be rolled in the hollow of a cane." The value of these manufactures was estimated according to the weight and quality of the article, the closeness of the texture, and the beauty of the colours; some, too, of the embroidery is said to have been of the most exquisite description.

But though the mariners and some of the manufacturers were relieved from personal taxation, we have the authority of Benjamin of Tudela, who visited