Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/467

 note the act of compressing, or forcing the separate hairs together, gave origin to the participle coactus, and its derivative coactilis. Pliny (H. N. viii. 48. s. 73.), after speaking of woven stuffs, mentions in the following terms the use of wool for making felt: "Lanæ et per se coactæ (al. coactam) vestem ficiunt," i. e. "Parcels of wool, driven together by themselves, make cloth." This is a very exact, though brief description of the process of felting. The following monumental inscription (Gruter, p. 648, n. 4.) contains the title Lanarius coactiliarius, meaning a manufacturer of woollen felt:—

Helvius Successus, the son of a freed man, and the father of the Roman emperor Pertinax, was a hatter in Liguria (tabernam coactiliariam in Liguria exercuerat, Jul. Cap. Pertinax, c. 3.). Pertinax himself, being fond of money, having the perseverance expressed by his agnomen, and having doubtless, in the course of his expeditions into the East, made valuable observations respecting the manufacture which he had known from his boyhood, continued and extended the same business, carrying it on and conveying his goods to a distance by the agency of slaves. The Romans originally received the use of felt together with its name from the Greeks (Plutarch, Numa, p. 117, ed. Steph.). The Greeks were acquainted with it as early as the age of Homer, who lived about 900 B. C. (Il. x. 265), and Hesiod (Op. et Dies, 542, 546).

The principal use of felt among the Greeks and Romans was to make coverings of the head for the male sex, and the most common cover made of this manufacture was a simple skull-cap, i. e. a cap exactly fitted to the shape of the head, as is shown in Plate VIII. fig. 1. taken from a sepulchral bas-relief which was found by Mr. Dodwell in Bœotia. The original is as large as life. The person represented appears to have been a Cynic philosopher. He leans upon the staff (baculus,