Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/78

 proves that she wove robes of a similar description for Honorius, and probably on the same occasion. Anastasius Bibliothecarius says, that when Pope Paschal was intent on finding the body of St. Cæcilia, having performed mass with a view to obtain the favor of a revelation on the subject, he was directed A. D. 821 to a cemetery on the Appian Way near Rome, and there found the body enveloped in cloth of gold. Although there is no reason to believe, that the body found by Paschal was the body of the saint pretended, yet it may have been the body of a Roman lady who had lived some centuries before, and probably about the time of Honorius and Maria.

Pisander, who belonged to the same period (900 B. C.) with Homer, speaks of the Lydians as ''wearing tunics adorned with gold''. Lydus observes, that the Lydians were supplied with gold from the sands of the Pactolus and the Hermus.

Virgil also represents the use of gold in weaving, as if it had existed in Trojan times. One of the garments so adorned was manufactured by Dido, the Sidonian, one by Andromache, and another was in the possession of Anchises. In all these instances the reference is to the habits of Phœnice, Lycia, or other parts of Asia.

He describes an ape ludicrously attired in a silk jacket; and, inveighing against the progress of luxury, he speaks of some to whom even silk garments were a burthen. In elaborate descriptions of the figured consular robes (the Trabeæ) of Honorius and Stilicho, he mentions the ''reins and other trappings of horses'', as being wrought in silk.

The frequent allusions to silk in the complimentary poems of Claudian, receive illustration from various imperial laws, which were promulgated in the same century, and in part by the very emperors to whom his flattery is addressed, and which