The class of writers, which will now be produced as affording testimony respecting the use of the mallow for weaving, are Greek authors, and who instead of the common Greek terms employ the Attic term Ἀμοργὸς and its derivatives.
Ἀμοργὸς has been explained by some of the lexicographers to be a kind of flax (See Julius Pollux, L. vii. § 74.). Perhaps by this explanation nothing more was intended than that it was a plant, the fibres of which were used to spin and weave into cloth. It is highly probable that it was the Malva Silvestris or Common Mallow, and that it was called Ἀμοργὸς.
According to the Attic lexicons of Pausanias (apud Eustath. l. c.) and of Mœris, Ἀμοργὸς was an Attic term. We now find traces of it in seven Attic writers, four or five of whom wrote comedy. These are Aristophanes, Cratinus, Antiphanes, Eupolis, Clearchus, Æschines, and Plato.
I. We shall take first Aristophanes, whose comedy called Lysistrata is frequently quoted by Pausanias and Cratinus, and being still extant throws considerable light upon the subject. It was represented in the year 412. B. C. Lysistrata says (l. 150),
Κᾂν τοῖς χιτώνιοισι τοῖς ἁμόργινοις
Γυμναὶ παριοῖμεν,
“And if we should present ourselves naked in shifts of amorgos;” showing that these shifts were transparent. Accordingly Mœris says, that the ἀμόργινον was λεπτὸν ὕφασμα, “a thin web.” Bisetus in his Greek commentary on this play, after quoting the explanations of Stephanus Byzantinus, Suidas, Eustathius, and the Etymologicum Magnum, judiciously concludes as follows: “From all these it is manifest, that ἀμόργινοι χιτώνες, whether they took their name from a place, from their color, or from the raw material, were a kind of valuable robe, worn by the rich, fashionable, and luxurious women.”
A subsequent passage of the Lysistrata (v. 736-741) still further illustrates this subject. A woman laments, that she has left at home her ἀμοργις without being peeled (ἄλοπον), and she goes to peel it (ἀποδείρειν). The mallow no less than flax and hemp, would require the bark to be stript off, and doubtless the best time for stripping it is as soon as the plant is gathered.
II. Cratinus died about 420 B. C. The following line, from his comedy called Μαλθακοὶ, represents a person spinning Ἀμοργός.
Ἀμοργὸν ἔνδον βρυτίνην νήθειν τινα.