Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/75



We have lately seen the Consulate of Furius Placidus celebrated in the Circus with so great eagerness for popularity, that he seemed to give not prizes, but patrimonies, presenting tunics of linen and silk, borders of linen, and even horses, to the great scandal of all good men.

The exact period here referred to is no doubt the Consulship of Placidus and Romulus, A. D. 343.

In the Epistles of (i. 39.) Myrrhine, a courtesan, loosens her girdle, which probably fastened her upper garment or shawl. Her shift was silk, and so transparent as to show the color of her skin.

AUSONIUS

satirizes a rich man of mean extraction, who nevertheless made lofty pretensions to nobility of birth, pretending to be descended from Mars, Romulus, and Remus, and who therefore caused their images to be embossed upon his plate and woven in a silken shawl.—Epig. 26.

In the following line, he alludes to the production of silk in the usual terms:

Vellera depectit nemoralia vestifluus Ser.

Idyll. 12.

The Ser remote, in flowing garments drest, Combs down the fleeces, which the trees invest.

QUINTUS AUR SYMMACHUS.

This distinguished officer, in a letter to the Consul Stilicho, apologizes in the following terms for his delay in sending a contribution of Holoseric pieces, that is, webs wholly made of silk, to the public exhibitions.

Others have deferred supplying the water for the theatre and the Holoseric pieces, so that I have examples in my favor.—Epist. l. iv. 8.

In a letter to Magnillus (l. v. 20.) he speaks of Subseric pieces, webs made only in part of silk, as presents;

At your instigation the Subseric pieces have been supplied, which my men kept back after the price had been settled; and likewise everything else pertaining to the prizes which were to be given.

CLAUDIAN

mentions silk in numerous passages. This poet, in describing