Page:The wealth of nations, volume 3.djvu/47

 for only by the great expense of the labor which must have been employed about it, and the expense of this labor again could arise from nothing but the awkwardness of the machinery which it made use of. The price of fine woollens, too, though not quite so extravagant, seems however to have been much above that of the present times. Some cloths, we are told by Pliny, dyed in a particular manner, cost a hundred denarii, or three pounds six shillings and eightpence the pound weight. Others dyed in another manner cost a thousand denarii the pound weight, or thirty-three pounds six shillings and eightpence. The Roman pound, it must be remembered, contained only twelve of our avoirdupois ounces. This high price, indeed, seems to have been principally owing to the dye. But had not the cloths themselves been much dearer than any which are made in the present times, so very expensive a dye would not probably have been bestowed upon them. The disproportion would have been too great between the value of the accessory and that of the principal. The price mentioned by the same author of some Triclinaria, a sort of woollen pillows or cushions made use of to lean upon as they reclined upon their couches at table, passes all credulity; some of them being said to have cost more than thirty thousand, others more than three hundred thousand pounds. This high price, too, is not said to have arisen from the dye. In the dress of the people of fashion of both sexes, there seems to have been much less variety, it is observed by Doctor Arbuthnot, in ancient than in modern times; and the very little variety which we find in that of the ancient statutes confirms his observation. He infers from this that