men and women in the manufacture of whatever was necessary to the Court and the army.[1] At Adrianople, Thessalonica, Antioch, Damascus, and other towns, arms and armour were forged, inlaid with gold when for the use of officers of rank; the costly purple robes of the Imperial household emanated from Tyre,[2] where dye-works and a fleet of fishing-boats for collecting the murex were maintained; these industries were strictly forbidden to the subject. There were, besides, at Cyzicus[3] and Scythopolis,[4] official factories for the weaving of cloth and linen. The military workshops were under the direction of the Master of the Offices, the arts of peace under that of the Count of the Sacred Largesses. Public manufacturers or traders were incorporated in a college or guild controlled by the latter Count, the privileges of which were limited to some five or six hundred members.[5] Among the staple productions of the Empire we find that Miletus[6] and Laodicea[7] were famous for woollen fabrics, Sardes[8] especially for carpets, Cos[9] for cotton materials, Tyre[10] and Berytus[11]not the [Greek: kapêlos]); the number seems too large to understand it of the capital alone.]
- ↑ Notitia Or., X, xii; Cod. Theod., X, xx, xxi, xxii, and Godefroy's commentaries; Cod., XI, viii, ix, x.
- ↑ Strabo, XVI, iv, 24; Pliny, op. cit., v, 16. There were different shades of purple and only the imperial shade was prohibited; Pliny, op. cit., xxi, 22. The murex was gathered in several other places, especially Laconia, where it was inferior only to that of Tyre; Pausanias, iii, 21, etc.
- ↑ Sozomen, v, 15. Much money was also coined at Cyzicus.
- ↑ Cod. Theod., X, xx, 8.
- ↑ Cod., IV, lxxxiii, 6. This doubtless applied only to great houses, not to petty retail dealers and shopkeepers (to the [Greek: emporos
- ↑ Pliny, op. cit., viii, 73; Athenaeus, i, 50; xv, 17, etc.
- ↑ Strabo, XII, viii, 16; Pliny, op. cit., 73, etc.
- ↑ Athenaeus, ii, 30; vi, 67.
- ↑ Pliny, op. cit., xi, 27, etc. It is a question whether the transparent Coan fabrics were of silk, linen, or cotton, or a mixture.
