Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/430

 horses, which drag the boats upon the Danube between Pest and Vienna, now wear coarse tunics of hemp.

Ammianus Marcellinus (xxxi. 2. p. 474.), speaking of the Huns, who lived beyond the Palus Mæotis, says,

They cover themselves with tunics made of linen, or of the skins of wild mice sewed together.

These tunics, though called "lintea," may have been the hempen garments, which, according to Herodotus, were scarce to be distinguished from linen.

The next writer, who mentions hemp after Herodotus, is Moschion, rather more than 200 years B. C. He states, that the magnificent ship Syracusia, built by the command of Hiero II., was provided with hemp from the Rhone for making ropes. The common materials for such purposes were ''the Egyptian Papyrus, the bark of the Lime-tree, of the Hemp-leaved Mallow, and of the Spanish and Portugal Broom'', and probably also the Stipa Tenacissima of Linnæus.

Hemp, as well as flax, was grown abundantly in Colchis. It was brought to the ports of the Ægean Sea by the Ionian merchants, who were intimately connected with the northern and eastern coasts of the Euxine through the medium of the Milesian colonies. This fact may account for the cultivation of hemp in Caria. The best was obtained in the time of Pliny (l. xix. c. 9.) from Alabanda and Mylasa in that country. Pliny also mentions a kind, which grew in the country of the Sabines, and which was remarkable for its height.

Automedon, who lived a little before Pliny, complains in an Epigram of a bad dinner given him by one of his acquaintances, and compares the tall stringy cabbages to hemp. As this author was a native of Cyzicus, he would probably have abundant opportunities of becoming familiar with the plant.

In the time of Pausanias hemp was grown in Elis. See his Eliaca, c. 26. § 4.. Brunck's Analecta, ii. 209.]