Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/59

 ''Reim. Suidas in v.'' [Greek: Tiberios]. Silk was to be worn by women only.

The next emperor Caligula had silk curtains to his throne (Dion. Cass. l. 59. p. 915. Reim.), and he wore silk as part of his dress, when he appeared in public. Dio Cassius particularly mentions, that, when he was celebrating a kind of triumph at Puteoli, he put on what he alleged to be the thorax of Alexander, and over that a silken chlamys, dyed with the murex, and adorned with gold and precious stones. On the following day he wore a tunic interwoven with gold. The use of shawls and tunics of silk was, however, except in the case of the extravagances of a Caligula, still confined to the female sex. Under the earlier emperors it is probable, that silk was obtained in considerable quantities for the wardrobe of the empress, where it was preserved from one reign to another, until in the year 176 Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, the philosopher, in consequence of the exhausted state of his treasury, sold by public auction in the Forum of Trajan the imperial ornaments and jewels together with the golden and silken robes of the Empress.

FIRST CENTURY.

SENECA, THE PHILOSOPHER.

Posse nos vestitos esse sine commercio Serum.—Epist. 91.

We may clothe ourselves without any commerce with the Seres.

Video Sericas vestes, si vestes vocandæ sunt, in quibus nihil est, quo defendi aut corpus aut denique pudor possit: quibus sumtis mulier parum liquidò nudam se non esse jurabit. Hæc ingenti summâ ab ignotis etiam ad commercium gentibus accersunter, ut matronæ nostræ ne adulteris quidem plus sui in cubiculo quam in publico ostendant.—De Beneficiis, L. vii. c. 9.

I see silken (Seric) garments, if they can be called garments, which cannot afford any protection either for the body or for shame: on taking which a woman will scarce with a clear conscience deny, that she is naked. These are sent for) to add to the splendor of his triumph.]