Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/366

 Tenuai non illum candentis carbasa lini, Non auro depicta chlamys, non flava galeri Cæsaries, pictoque juvant subtemine braccæ.

vi. 228.

No aid to him his chalmys white as snow, Muslin with gold enrich'd, his yellow curls Of artificial hair, and figured pantaloons.

(See Part 1, chap. iii. p. 59.)

Also Prudentius, the Christian poet (See Part 1, chap. iii. p. 59.), in an elaborate account of Pride, depicts her in a garment of the same kind:

Carbasea ex humeris summo collecta coibat Palla sinu, teretem nectens a pectore nodum.—Psychom. 186.

A muslin kerchief by a knot compress'd, Pass'd o'er her shoulders, and adorn'd her breast.

Tantâ tamque multiplici fertilitate abundat rerum omnium Cyprus, ut nullius externi indigens adminiculi, indigenis viribus, a fundamento ipso carinæ ad supremos usque carbasos ædificet onerarium navem, omnibusque armamentis instructam mari committat.—''Amm. Marcellinus'', xiv. 8.

Apuleius mentions carbasina in conjunction with bombycina and other kinds of cloth. He may consequently be presumed to use the word in its proper sense, to wit, as denoting calico or muslin. In the same manner cotton is distinguished from silk by Sidonius Apollinaris. Also we may presume that cotton and not linen sails are to be understood in the following line of Avienus:

Si tamen in Boream flectantur carbasa cymbæ.

''Descr. Orbis'', 799.

Here the writer not only professes to give geographical information, but he is describing the Indian seas and islands; and as in the present day, so also in ancient times, the sails used in the navigation of those seas were probably made of cotton.

Strabo uses the word [Greek: karpasinai] in describing the official dress of a certain class of priestesses among the Cimbri. Although it