Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/217

 men and women in the manufacture of whatever was necessary to the Court and the army. At Adrianople, Thessalonica, Antioch, Damascus, and other towns, arms and armour were forged, inlaid with gold when for the use of officers of rank; the costly purple robes of the Imperial household emanated from Tyre, where dye-works and a fleet of fishing-boats for collecting the murex were maintained; these industries were strictly forbidden to the subject. There were, besides, at Cyzicus and Scythopolis, official factories for the weaving of cloth and linen. The military workshops were under the direction of the Master of the Offices, the arts of peace under that of the Count of the Sacred Largesses. Public manufacturers or traders were incorporated in a college or guild controlled by the latter Count, the privileges of which were limited to some five or six hundred members. Among the staple productions of the Empire we find that Miletus and Laodicea were famous for woollen fabrics, Sardes especially for carpets, Cos for cotton materials, Tyre[10] and Berytus[11]not the [Greek: kapêlos]); the number seems too large to understand it of the capital alone.]