Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/62

 With winding trails of various silks were made, Whose branching gold set off the rich brocade.

Ibid.

With this description we compare that of Seneca, which represents silk as embroidered in Asia Minor, with the" Mæonian needle."

PLINY

speaks copiously and repeatedly of the manufacture of silk. Nevertheless we learn from him scarce anything, which we did not know from the earlier authorities. His accounts are taken from Aristotle, from Varro, and probably also from persons who accompanied the Parthian expeditions, or who engaged in the trade with inner Asia. But according to his usual manner, when he speaks of what he has not himself seen, he confounds accounts from different witnesses, which are inconsistent with one another. He asserts that the bombyx was a native of Cos; but it is not probable that the women of that island would, in such case, have recourse to the laborious operation of converting foreign finished goods into threads for their own weaving. It is, therefore, only reasonable to suppose that whatever manufacture was carried on from the raw material, was, like that of Tyre or Berytus, composed of unwrought silk imported from the East. It is mentioned both by Theophanes and Zonares, the Byzantine historians, that before silk-worms were brought to Constantinople in the middle of the sixth century, no person in that capital knew that silk was produced by a worm; a tolerably strong evidence that none were reared so near to Constantinople as Cos.

Pliny's account of the Coan bombyx is evidently a cloud of fable and absurdity, in which, however, we may discern a few lines of truth, probably derived from the accounts of the silk-*worm of the Seres.

JOSEPHUS

says, that the emperors Titus and Vespasian wore silk dresses , when they celebrated at Rome their triumph over the Jews.