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THE DECLINE AND FALL
but the deep purple[1] which the Phœnicians extracted from a shell-fish was restrained to the sacred person and palace of the emperor; and the penalties of treason were denounced against the ambitious subjects who dared to usurp the prerogative of the throne.[2]
The use of silk by the Romans I need not explain that silk[3] is originally spun from the bowels of a caterpillar, and that it composes the golden tomb from whence a worm emerges in the form of a butterfly. Till the reign of Justinian, the silk-worms who feed on the leaves of the white mulberry-tree were confined to China; those of the pine, the oak, and the ash, were common in the forests both of Asia and Europe; but, as their education is more difficult and their produce more uncertain, they were generally neglected, except in the little island of Ceos, near the coast of Attica. A thin gauze was procured from their webs, and this Cean manufacture, the invention of a woman, for female use, was long admired both in the East and at Rome. Whatever suspicions may be raised by the garments of the Medes and Assyrians, Virgil is the most ancient writer who expressly mentions the soft wool which was combed from the trees of the Seres or- ↑ By the discovery of Cochineal, &c. we far surpass the colours of antiquity. Their royal purple had a strong smell, and a dark cast as deep as bull's blood — obscuritas rubens (says Cassiodorius, Var. 1, 2), nigredo sanguinea. The president Goguet (Origine des Loix et des Arts, part ii. l. ii. c. 2, p. 184-215) will amuse and satisfy the reader. I doubt whether his book, especially in England, is as well known as it deserves to be.
- ↑ Historical proofs of this jealousy have been occasionally introduced, and many more might have been added; but the arbitrary acts of despotism were justified by the sober and general declarations of law (Codex Theodosian. l. x. tit. 21, leg. 3. Codex Justinian. l. xi. tit. 8, leg. 5). An inglorious permission, and necessary restriction, was applied to the mimae, the female dancers (Cod. Theodos. l. xv. tit. 7, leg. 11).
- ↑ In the history of insects (far more wonderful than Ovid's Metamorphoses) the silk-worm holds a conspicuous place. The bombyx of the isle of Ceos, as described by Pliny (Hist. Natur. xi. 26, 27, with the notes of the two learned Jesuits, Hardouin and Brotier), may be illustrated by a similar species in China (Mémoires sur les Chinois, tom. ii. p. 575-598); but our silk-worm, as well as the white mulberry-tree, were unknown to Theophrastus and Pliny. [Here the author has curiously confused Ceos with Cos. The earliest notice of the silk-worm is in Aristotle, Hist. Animal., 5, 19: ἐκ δὲ τούτου τον̂ ζώου καὶ τὰ βομβύκια ἀναλύουσι τω̂ν γυναικω̂ν τινὲς ἀναπηνιζόμεναι κἄπειτα ὑϕα̂ίνουσιν. The early Chinese Chronicle Hou-han-shu, which was partly written during the 5th cent. A. D. and covers the period A.D. 25 to 220, states that in Ta-tsin (the eastern part of the Roman empire) the people "practise the planting of trees and the rearing of silk-worms" (Hirth, China and the Roman Orient, p. 40). In a later work, the Wei-shu, contemporary with Justinian, mulberry-trees are specified in a proximity which is perhaps significant." The country produces all kinds of grain, the mulberry-tree and hemp. The inhabitants busy themselves with silk-worms and fields" (Hirth, ib. p. 50).]
