Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/219

 granary of the whole Orient. Dardania and Dalmatia were rich in cheese, Rhodes exported raisins and figs, Phoenicia dates, and the capital itself had a large trade in preserved tunnies.

China was always topographically unknown to the ancients, and about the sixth century only did they begin to discern clearly that an ocean existed beyond it. The country was regarded as unapproachable by the Greek and Roman merchants, but nevertheless became recognized at a very early period as the source of silk. Fully four hundred years before the Christian era the cocoons were carried westward, and the art of unwinding them was discovered by Pamphile of Cos, one of the women engaged in weaving the diaphanous textiles for which that island was celebrated. Owing to the comparative vicinity of the Persian and Chinese frontiers, the silk exported by the Celestial Empire always tended to accumulate in Persia, so that the merchants of that nation